For millennia, the Middle East's water crisis seemed an immutable fact of geography — a region defined as much by what it lacked as by what lay beneath its sands. Today, a convergence of plummeting solar costs, advancing membrane technology, and hard-won engineering expertise is rewriting that story.
Adults who are 21 or older can carry up to 30 grams. This amount applies to personal use within Pittsburgh’s limits. Carrying more could lead to confiscation or legal action. Staying under the limit avoids problems during any public stop.
In the study, the scientists didn’t just test one plant compound at a time. They tested two traditional Chinese medicine compounds together — luteolin (from flowers like honeysuckle and chrysanthemum) and astragaloside IV (from astragalus root, Huang Qi). These plants have been combined in Chinese herbal formulas for centuries to help the body recover from injury and inflammation.
For millennia, the Middle East's water crisis seemed an immutable fact of geography — a region defined as much by what it lacked as by what lay beneath its sands. Today, a convergence of plummeting solar costs, advancing membrane technology, and hard-won engineering expertise is rewriting that story.
Adults who are 21 or older can carry up to 30 grams. This amount applies to personal use within Pittsburgh’s limits. Carrying more could lead to confiscation or legal action. Staying under the limit avoids problems during any public stop.
In the study, the scientists didn’t just test one plant compound at a time. They tested two traditional Chinese medicine compounds together — luteolin (from flowers like honeysuckle and chrysanthemum) and astragaloside IV (from astragalus root, Huang Qi). These plants have been combined in Chinese herbal formulas for centuries to help the body recover from injury and inflammation.
For millennia, the Middle East's water crisis seemed an immutable fact of geography — a region defined as much by what it lacked as by what lay beneath its sands. Today, a convergence of plummeting solar costs, advancing membrane technology, and hard-won engineering expertise is rewriting that story.
Adults who are 21 or older can carry up to 30 grams. This amount applies to personal use within Pittsburgh’s limits. Carrying more could lead to confiscation or legal action. Staying under the limit avoids problems during any public stop.
In the study, the scientists didn’t just test one plant compound at a time. They tested two traditional Chinese medicine compounds together — luteolin (from flowers like honeysuckle and chrysanthemum) and astragaloside IV (from astragalus root, Huang Qi). These plants have been combined in Chinese herbal formulas for centuries to help the body recover from injury and inflammation.
For millennia, the Middle East's water crisis seemed an immutable fact of geography — a region defined as much by what it lacked as by what lay beneath its sands. Today, a convergence of plummeting solar costs, advancing membrane technology, and hard-won engineering expertise is rewriting that story.
Adults who are 21 or older can carry up to 30 grams. This amount applies to personal use within Pittsburgh’s limits. Carrying more could lead to confiscation or legal action. Staying under the limit avoids problems during any public stop.
In the study, the scientists didn’t just test one plant compound at a time. They tested two traditional Chinese medicine compounds together — luteolin (from flowers like honeysuckle and chrysanthemum) and astragaloside IV (from astragalus root, Huang Qi). These plants have been combined in Chinese herbal formulas for centuries to help the body recover from injury and inflammation.
For millennia, the Middle East's water crisis seemed an immutable fact of geography — a region defined as much by what it lacked as by what lay beneath its sands. Today, a convergence of plummeting solar costs, advancing membrane technology, and hard-won engineering expertise is rewriting that story.
Adults who are 21 or older can carry up to 30 grams. This amount applies to personal use within Pittsburgh’s limits. Carrying more could lead to confiscation or legal action. Staying under the limit avoids problems during any public stop.
In the study, the scientists didn’t just test one plant compound at a time. They tested two traditional Chinese medicine compounds together — luteolin (from flowers like honeysuckle and chrysanthemum) and astragaloside IV (from astragalus root, Huang Qi). These plants have been combined in Chinese herbal formulas for centuries to help the body recover from injury and inflammation.
For millennia, the Middle East's water crisis seemed an immutable fact of geography — a region defined as much by what it lacked as by what lay beneath its sands. Today, a convergence of plummeting solar costs, advancing membrane technology, and hard-won engineering expertise is rewriting that story.
Adults who are 21 or older can carry up to 30 grams. This amount applies to personal use within Pittsburgh’s limits. Carrying more could lead to confiscation or legal action. Staying under the limit avoids problems during any public stop.
In the study, the scientists didn’t just test one plant compound at a time. They tested two traditional Chinese medicine compounds together — luteolin (from flowers like honeysuckle and chrysanthemum) and astragaloside IV (from astragalus root, Huang Qi). These plants have been combined in Chinese herbal formulas for centuries to help the body recover from injury and inflammation.
For millennia, the Middle East's water crisis seemed an immutable fact of geography — a region defined as much by what it lacked as by what lay beneath its sands. Today, a convergence of plummeting solar costs, advancing membrane technology, and hard-won engineering expertise is rewriting that story.
Adults who are 21 or older can carry up to 30 grams. This amount applies to personal use within Pittsburgh’s limits. Carrying more could lead to confiscation or legal action. Staying under the limit avoids problems during any public stop.
In the study, the scientists didn’t just test one plant compound at a time. They tested two traditional Chinese medicine compounds together — luteolin (from flowers like honeysuckle and chrysanthemum) and astragaloside IV (from astragalus root, Huang Qi). These plants have been combined in Chinese herbal formulas for centuries to help the body recover from injury and inflammation.
For millennia, the Middle East's water crisis seemed an immutable fact of geography — a region defined as much by what it lacked as by what lay beneath its sands. Today, a convergence of plummeting solar costs, advancing membrane technology, and hard-won engineering expertise is rewriting that story.
Adults who are 21 or older can carry up to 30 grams. This amount applies to personal use within Pittsburgh’s limits. Carrying more could lead to confiscation or legal action. Staying under the limit avoids problems during any public stop.
In the study, the scientists didn’t just test one plant compound at a time. They tested two traditional Chinese medicine compounds together — luteolin (from flowers like honeysuckle and chrysanthemum) and astragaloside IV (from astragalus root, Huang Qi). These plants have been combined in Chinese herbal formulas for centuries to help the body recover from injury and inflammation.
Dr Sultan Ahmed Al Jaber, the Masdar CEO, is the recipient of this year’s United Nations’ Champions of the Earth award.
The award honours individuals whose actions and leadership have had a far-reaching positive impact on the environment, in advancing clean energy technologies to mitigate the threats of climate change.
Abu Dhabi’s multi-faceted renewable energy company, Masdar, has created the first-ever clean-energy-powered eco-city in the kind of oil-rich environment much more conducive to discounting climate change.
Waeel Abdessalam breeds rabbits on the third floor of his family home in El-Hamidiyah el-Gadida, a small village in the Fayoum area roughly 100 km southwest of Cairo. A beneficiary of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations’ TeleFood program, the young man tends to the rabbits early in the morning before leaving to study at a nearby technical school and in the evenings when he returns. Each rabbit sells for approximately $3.50 at the market and the meat and fur are respectively used to supplement the six-member family’s diet and income.
Desert locusts traveling southwest from Algeria and Libya threaten to decimate crops in Niger and Mali, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations warned on Wednesday. Since rebel forces killed Gaddafi in October last year, insecurity along both sides of the Algerian-Libyan border has hampered pest control efforts, allowing locusts to swarm across the desert like a giant red blanket that obscures everything in sight. FAO officials predicted in March that if more was not done to control the migrating locusts, they would reach Niger in June. It seems they have arrived right on time.
Heaping urban trash may be an even more daunting global phenomenon than climate change, the World Bank warned in a recent report. What a Waste: A Global Review of Solid Waste Management reveals that by 2025, city dwellers could produce as much as 2.2 billion tonnes of solid waste a year, up 70% than the 1.3 billion tonnes currently generated.
More waste is generated in cities than rural areas because more packaging is used and less is recycled, and because people living in rural areas are less likely to have a consumption-driven lifestyle. But getting a handle on the problem, particularly in developing countries, requires a strong social contract between the municipality and community, according to the report – a serious challenge in parts of the Middle East and North Africa.
In occasion of World Oceans Day, Green Prophet provides you with some tools for some (much needed) marine activism.
What does sea water mean for you? What memories do you have of swimming in the sea? If you were in the Red Sea, the Gulf of Aden, Arabian Sea or the Persian Gulf 15 to 20 years ago, I can guarantee that you will not experience that exact same sight in these places today. Countless testimonies worry about the complete disappearance of some fish species, coral bleaching and desolate coasts. Life has been sucked away, mangroves destroyed and the invisible ecosystem processes which sustain a life system are rapidly, not slowly, disappearing. If you are feeling alarmed, that is not enough, it is time to critically change our ways for good. The ocean is at a tipping point where human actions over the next 10 years will determine the state of the ocean for the next 10,000 years.
June 8th is World Oceans Day, the UN-designated day for the global community to celebrate and take action for our shared ocean. The theme this year is “Youth: the Next Wave for Change,” and many events will focus on inspiring the younger generations by addressing three critical factors that have been identified as the main threats that are changing our ocean: Overfishing, Climate Change and Rubbish.
In occasion of World Ocean Day, Green prophet will provide our readers with some tools so that you can make a difference.
Greenearth energy looks to Israeli solar tech to make use of Oz’s vast brown coal resources.
With the climate change tipping point precipitously close, an Israeli-Australian venture will use solar technology to mitigate the greenhouse gases from coal in Australia. Developed at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel the new venture will reduce carbon dioxide emissions from the burning of brown coal. The venture has been recently launched in Israel by NewCO2Fuels, a subsidiary of the Australian company Greenearth Energy Ltd. Greenearth has has acquired an exclusive worldwide license for the new solar technology developed by Prof. Jacob Karni from the Weizmann. Karni is considered one of the world’s foremost innovators of solar tech. He was involved in the technology behind Aora, a distributed solar thermal company with plants in Israel and Spain.
It’s never difficult to pick a Moroccan building out of the crowd and this beautiful new Guelmim Technology School is no exception. Bold and red like the nearby desert, the 6,833 square meter campus design by architects Saad El Kabbaj, Driss Kettani, and Mohamed Amine Siana comprises a contemporary twist on vernacular architecture. Hit the jump for a closer look at the building that acclaimed photographer Fernando Guerra captured in a series of breathtaking images.
A Saudi solar project with gigantic storage could deliver solar at night in South Africa.
Saudi Arabia might not spring to mind as a nation creating the top CSP companies globally, but South Africa just selected as a “preferred bidder” to develop solar, a consortium led by the Kingdom’s own power and water group ACWA Power International.
South Africa’s new renewable energy policy is one of the most professionally discriminating in the world, according to SolarReserve SVP Tom Georgis. The nation’s first request for bids to meet its new renewable target was limited to just the top global solar PV and CSP companies able to muster the technical and financial resources to meet the contracts professionally.
This avoids the site “squatting” that wasted resources in California, where fly by night developers bought or rented key tracts of land with solar potential in the southwestern desert, despite having no possible way to produce energy – yet each proposal still had to get fully vetted to determine that anyway.
April 2012 saw Tel Aviv’s first Bridal Fashion Week, featuring fifty up and coming Israeli designers. Israel’s lucrative bridal fashion business is on the rise. And now it appears that Natalie Portman’s eco-friendly engagement ring or vegan shoes are not the only green, Israeli trendsetter snagging headlines.
Israeli designer Liraz Rubbin uses natural materials and prides herself on not letting any material go to waste. “We invested over 170 hours working only on making the train, because we used fabric leftovers,” Rubbin described one of her creations. “Maybe it does not pay off in terms of cost, but it certainly does in terms of the final product—for the environment, for me, and also for the client.”
The world watched with bated breath as André Borschberg and Bertrand Piccard respectively made their way from Switzerland to Spain and finally to Morocco in the sun-powered Solar Impulse. The first solar-powered transcontinental flight has come to a close but the journey towards a more sustainable method of global travel is only just beginning.
As Piccard, who founded the Solar Impulse project, reached the highest point of his flight over Morocco, the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) announced that he is this year’s recipient of the Champions of the Earth Laureate Award. Hit the jump to view a few images that chronicle the journey that began on May 24th, 2012 in Payerne Switzerland and ended last night at 23h30 in Rabat, Morocco, and watch a video of the plane’s first African landing.
Venus crossed the sun this morning in the Middle East, giving heaven-gazers a once in a lifetime opportunity to see the hot planet. Venus’ next transit accross the sun will be in the year 2117. Earth’s twin made an appearance as a black dot traversing the sun this morning in the Middle East and Egyptians were there watching. According to Ahram Online, Cairo’s early-risers got to see this transit this morning at 6:37 am, and the experience was visible for a total of 18 minutes. People all over the world prepared for the spectacle, some in Canada as picnic sunsets. We didn’t get up early enough to see the Venus event, and be sure that whenever you are keen to “see” sun events that you take the necessary precautions as Brian points out in his Venus crossing story.
The Kuwaiti-Spanish Architecture firm AGi scooped two coveted awards at the International Property Award held in Burj Al-Arab, Dubai. In addition to being recognized for its Wafra Living Complex, the firm’s experimental Wafra Wind Tower project has received the Best Architecture Multiple Residence Award.
A Google and Bloomberg TV channel collaborative, the International Property Award is well-regarded among residential and commercial property developers. So it’s particularly exciting that this new urban tower concept, which aims to achieve low energy consumption and source its construction materials regionally, should receive such international attention.
Paris art exhibit tackles Islamic taboos in a show aimed at broadening Western views of Mid East culture.
Oooh la la…The Body Uncovered, at Paris’ Arab World Institute (AWI), presents two hundred controversial paintings, photographs, sculptures and videos that tackle variations of a provocative theme: the naked body. A mix of art forms created by over 70 Arab artists spotlight subtexts rarely exposed in Arab culture: sensuality, violence against women, and homosexuality.
Renaud Muselier, AWI chairman, says the exhibition strives to “challenge stereotypes usually associated with the Arab world that reduce it to the single image of religious fanaticism. It is intended instead to echo the reality of an Arab art scene that exists despite the conservative climate, dares to overcome taboos and manages to find a place in the global contemporary art scene.”
Given the spicy subject, the number of participants is remarkable. Their artwork is broadly themed and richly rendered. The modern and contemporary pieces bow to forerunners in the Arab art world dating back to the late 19th century. Turn-of-that-century painters from Lebanon, Syria and Egypt frequently studied in Europe where they experimented in nude painting and drawing that was forbidden back home. As with their literary compatriots in the Arab Renaissance, the artists were open to Western ideas which they melded with their Eastern heritage.
The exhibition, on view through July 15, was curated by Hoda Makram-Ebeid and Philippe Cardinal. “We hope to show the Middle Eastern public that there are Arabs who dare to explore this subject that has been hidden by a certain hypocrisy in the Arab world. And to show the Western public that there are artists who show, think, and act in ways other than according to the stereotypes of Arab society,” Makram-Ebeid told ARTINFO France.
Contemporary artists includes photographer Youssef Nabil with his Orientalist-inspired photograph “Natacha Sleeping”, and painter Ghada Amer, whose works depict female figures with their legs wildly akimbo.
Humor abounds, as in Mehdi-Georges Lahlou‘s photograph “Mouvement décomposé,” which shows the artist performing a belly dance in women’s clothing . Zoulikha Bouabdellah also riffs on bellydancing, with a video of the dance performed to the Marseillaise.
Co-curator Philippe Cardinal said “When there are social taboos, the role of artists is to unravel them at the seams: they are the first to rebel against censorship.”
But it’s not all about titillation. The body is also shown in a social and political context. Iraqi artist Adel Abidin‘s video “Ping-Pong” shows men playing ping-pong with a naked woman in place of a net. Her skin is marked with red circles left by missed shots, her body shudders each time she’s hit. The woman represents “the Iraqi people caught in the midst of war,” said Makram-Ebeid. It’s also a metaphor for the oppression of women.
Homosexuality, forbidden in Arab countries, is represented in Lebanese-American George Awde’s photographs of young men in Beirut, shirtless, embracing. An his 2009 video “Comradeship”, Egyptian artist Mahmoud Khaled features a bodybuilder flexing his muscles, clad in a form-fitting bathing suit.
There’s also a man rubbing oil onto another bodybuilder’s muscles. The accompanying text says in both Arabic and English: “I have taken courage to challenge myself and you have taken time to allow this to affect you. The payoff is well worth it.”
Tarik Essalhi‘s sculpture “Abu Ghraib” depicts a prisoner as a modern day Saint Sebastian. Palestinian artist Hani Zurob opts for a less direct interpretation of captivity in a blue painted portrait representing his own incarceration in an Israeli prison.
Zena el-Khalil‘s mixed media “Beefsteak” shows three bearded men, one of them holding a machine gun, all wearing girls’ dresses. It refers to “all the television images she saw as a child. Images of war, Michael Jackson videos, and Barbie dolls; kitsch remained and got mixed together in her mind,” according to Makram-Ebeid. “The world is made of contradictions; everything happens so fast — in hybrid fashion, she shows war and the levity of childhood in a kind of blur.”
Huguette Caland, a Lebanese painter now resident in California, looms large as the show’s powerhouse. The daughter of the first president of Lebanon, she splashed onto the 1960′ s art scene with her oversized monochromatic body part paintings. “Now she’s 83, and she was a pioneer at the beginning of women’s liberation,” Makram-Ebeid said. “She dared to work on the body, nudity, and women’s sexuality.”
While most of these artists were born in Arab countries, they now live and work mainly in Europe and the United States. It’s unlikely the exhibition would ever travel to Arab countries, and improbable that such art would be openly produced in Islamic states. To date, there has been no critical backlash.
For those not able to step into the Paris gallery, a virtual visit to the artists’ websites will allow a fuller view of these remarkable and provocative works.
Images of a still from Adel Abidin’s video “Ping-Pong; Youssef Nabil’s “Natacha Sleeping”; Mehdi-Georges Lahlou’s photograph “Mouvement décomposé; and George Awde’s “Quiet Crossing” all courtesy of Arab World Institute
In 2009, Lebanon pledged to produce 12% of its electricity from renewable sources by 2020- is this target optimistic today?
Renewables are becoming an important source of discussion in the Middle East, as it should. Vestas estimates renewables accounts for only 0.2 % of power production in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), an embarrassing figure considering the EU’s average is 17% (the highest being Norway with an incredible 103%) and the global average is of around 3%. But Lebanon is looking to aim high.
Guy Lougashi makes incredible sculptures entirely out of either colored or transparent tape. Eschewing the hardening or drying phase of many sculptural materials such as clay or paper pulp, the artist claims that tape is an incredibly versatile material that forms an excellent foundation for other design projects. And now it’s possible to glean some of his hard-earned wisdom in an upcoming four-day workshop that will be held in Haifa.
