Bach Under The Stars

Sunday 25 November 2012

Women in China got lung cancer from indoor pollution



Well, this is absolutely true.

Indoor pollution could be responsible for more than 20 000 lung cancer death worldwide. Doses of air pollutants inside buildings can be much higher than anything outside and Chinese custom of open fire cooking is really damaging.

In this study - Chinese food cooking and lung cancer in women nonsmokers[1]
not only associate lung cancer with cooking, but shows increased risk with larger number of meals cooked every day and without using fume extractor.



Nevertheless everything women are experiencing is dwarfed by nicotinism in men.

Transparency in African Union



This is good initiative, but transparency wasn't African Union's priority in the times of Mbeki and Obasanjo, when they was trying to stop numerous civil and international wars. And this was only five years ago.

First comprehensive and effective transparency law was probably Nigerian Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative[1]
passed in 2007. It was mildly successful only because Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, anti-corruption agency, investigated 30 Nigerian governors, ministers, members of parliament including speaker and finally arested police chief. Still investigating corruption in some African countries isn't safe thing to do.



You can find guidelines for better resource deals in the places like Publish What You Pay[2]
or Natural Resource Charter[3]
. There are many NGOs working better governance, notably Open Society[4]
and Mo Ibrahim[5]
and African Union should be good forum to share natural resource policies, but currently poor countries's leaders want to listen to Norway more than to each other and Bono explaining advance of royalty model over profit tax model during management of large scale bauxite exploration should be averted at all costs.

First attempts in development of poor countries


I'm thinking about period after Marshall Plan.
There was optimistic view about building functioning states after relative success in Germany.
It was, when notion of "development" was created. It was real attempt to Denmark-like functioning governments with Ministry of Finance and all that. From Taiwan to Senegal.
Around 1970 everyone was discouraged and attempts for development stopped, there were several wars, elections ended with one man-one vote-one time scheme and generally structural changes in low-income countries were abandoned.
There was after that period, when there was attempt to build infrastructure and reform industries in low-income and middle-income countries, by pouring money into them. Foreign aid was meant to replace internal savings, which were of course impossible for them. In 1980 this ended. Effect were very slight improvement, in some countries. Because effects were so slim aid was stopped. Nevertheless you can hardly any poor country without hospitals, roads or power plants build in 70's from foreign money. There are just few of them.
Both waves of development were real and discounting all policies of high-income countries towards middle-income and low-income as looting is disingenuous.

Saturday 24 November 2012

North Korea food aid


Government was sending mostly regular food, not aid to Pyongyang. Aid wasn't ended, because malversation (although it was present), but because the government threw everybody away, when it felt stronger.
Currently World Food Programme is working under "no access, no food aid" principle, which includes:
  • Household food information. Every four months the WFP would undertake baseline household surveys, interview local officials and others (e.g., farmers, factory officials, etc.), hold focus group discussions, and take observational walks.
  • Distribution monitoring. The WFP would shift at the margin to monitoring distribution centers and food-for-work projects, interview those receiving food aid there, and increase monitoring visits to non-household sites (e.g., county warehouses, factories producing food products with WFP commodities, and institutions receiving food aid).
  • Ration cards. All WFP beneficiaries would be given a WFP-designed and printed ration card that would be checked by the WFP at distributions.
  • Commodity tracking. WFP staff would be allowed to physically follow food aid from the port of entry, to county warehouses, to three to six Public Distribution Centers (PDCs) per county, as well as implement a more uniform and consistent system to track commodities by waybill number, with the ultimate goal of eventually introducing an electronic system that would allow tracking of individual bags from port to final point of delivery.


    You do anthropometric measurements, computerized food intake analysis, nutrition body composition and verifies surveys.
    This is actually novelty in North Korea, before 2009 the government wasn't allowing this before 2009.

Swaziland has probably highest rate of unwanted births, surely highest in Sub-Saharan Africa

The Causes of Educational Differences in Fertility in sub-Saharan Africa

Development of post-commust European countries

Look at this graph. Almost all of them surpassed relatively sluggish growth in Brazil. Moldova and Ukraine performed badly, but they are hardly examples of economic and political liberation. On the other hand starting point of Kyrgystan or Tajikistan were in position of today's Sub-Saharan Africa, so they were never in competition with Poland.

Friday 23 November 2012

Europe seen from ISS


NASA releases the first ever photo of the space shuttle docked with the International Space Station; RX-78 to the scale


Natural gas in Nigeria



  • hot climate, no need for heating,
  • no infrastructure for domestic consumption either way,
  • power sector is small, no power plants to utilize the resource,
  • natural gas-dependent industries are inefficient and underdeveloped, no domestic demand for petrochemicals, aluminium, steel and so on,
You should realize that utilization of this amount of natural gas needs about $30b investments in power plants (if you want to use it this way).
There are solving this by:
  • producing LNG,
  • producing diesel from gas,
  • injecting natural gas into oil field,
  • gas pipeline to Ghana,
  • gas pipeline to Algeria,
  • expanding internal pipelines and natural gas power plants,
That said, effects aren't satisfactory.

Ban on advertisements

Check out Algiers, Urbino or Sao Paolo. This is just out of top of my head.
Ban on advertisements isn't as uncommon as you may think. This is most obvious in Sao Paolo, big crowded city.

China's neighbors



Consider that China is bordering:

Thursday 22 November 2012

Water usage in Arab countries


Shoaiba is larger than all three desalination plants in UAE combined.
150 million m3 per year in Shoaiba is pale in comparison to planned Ras Al Zour with 375 million m3 per year capacity.
Largest solar desalinization plant planed would be 10 million m3 per year Al-Khafji. This is miniscule in country, which is projected to use 4000 million m3 per year in 2020.
They need to burn natural gas and oil as fast as they can pumping it from the ground. Solar power doesn't make any change.

UAE is cutting down municipal water usage per person.
Real problem aren't cities, but agriculture. Libya, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Oman and now UAE have huge and expensive agriculture. This is kind of insane and awesome in the same time.
They delude themselves vision of food independence, while costs are enormous. Saudi are mining 2300 liter of water 3000 meters under the surface to produce just one liter of milk. Al Safi is diary farm twice the size of largest such farm in USA, ten times larger than largest in Europe.
This incredible... and they are exporting milk to other Persian Gulf countries. This is crazy.

Oleander hawk moth or Daphnis Nerii


Current nuclear plant designs


Well, beside AP1000 there is AP-600,
ESBWR from GE-Hitachi, 1600 MW BWR,
VVER(MIR)-1200 from Atomenergoproekt, 1200 MW PWR, although I don't know if you can buy it ATM, they put $1.5b price tag,
Kerena from AREVA, 1250 MW BWR,
BWR 90 from ABB, 1200 MW BWR,
BWR 90+ from ABB, 1500 MW BWR, but Sweden isn't promoting them now, this need to be checked,
APR-1400 from KEPCO, 1400 MW PWR,
CANDU-6, 740 MW PWR,
AHWR-LEU, 300 MW PWR, although they claim it is export model, you should check, if it is permitted to run in your country,
BN-800 from Atomstroyexport, 800 MW sodium-cooled fast breeder,
HTR-PM from Chinergy, 210 MW modular high temperature pebble-bed, I don't know what delivery time they can tell you, but this will be probably first IV-generation NPP for export,

China - North Korea

IMO, in the long run China may prefer more American military near its land border. Look at Afghanistan. China is much better off with semi-failed state right now and American presence than with civil war 1994-2001 and total chaos.

Fukushima Power Plant


Well, Japanese people should know about Fukushima Daini Power Plant (newer design than Daiichi).
The managed to shut down all reactors till 15 March despite massive damage done by the earthquake and tsunami.
Japanese should be conscious of danger of tsunami, but plants build after 1980 may be resilient to powerful earthquakes.

Cigarette warning labels




Assessing the impact of cigarette package health warning labels: a cross-country comparison in Brazil, Uruguay and Mexico
Results are much more acknowledgement of negative health impacts, motivates people to search more information about harm of smoking and even makes people think about quitting. Beyond that more emotionally engaging pictures makes people more interested.

Poverty traps


According to Paul Collier there are four traps:
  1. Conflict
  2. Mismanaged dependency on natural resources
  3. Weak governance in small countries
  4. "Landlocked with bad neighbors"

Scottish windfarms paid cash to stop producing energy


This is pretty obvious, that Scotland doesn't have enough pumped storage station for so much wind electricity, as it is.
greater interconnection with our EU neighbours
Can someone translate this for me. Do they mean France?
Connecting Northern France with Scotland with new energy linkage will cost much more than billion euro and make french power grid less stable. Why on Earth would France do that.
Especially, when France have its own windmills to take for.
Wind power gives you feeling of smugness only when it is produced locally. Subsidizing it abroad is no good.

Chosen pictures from Kernbeisser's collections.


1. Model goat farm made by Swiss


Performance chart with statue of goat is the best



2. Never completed motorway


Railway bridge



3. Province near border with South


New house




Older house
. Apparently there is some consistency there.



Kitchen is very interesting




Kindergarten



4. Beautiful lake near border with South


Drying seaweed



5. Port city


Children at beach



6. Road trip inside eastern province


"Let us revenge a hundred and thousand fold on the US imperialist wolves!"




Dog-meat restaurant




Local shop




Road construction
, 2
, 3
, 4




Ox cart




Modern block




Street




Bridge




Kindergarten




Garage



7. City rebuilt by Germans


Main street




With cycle path even




And ox cart




House of Culture




Blocks




Grand Theatre




Lorry powered by wood




Bench once used by Kim Il Sung




Trolleybus




Newer, not-German houses seen from hotel



8. Construction of new road


Volunteers




Houses for laborers




Producing of road metal



9. Pyongyang in winter


Children playing




Clearing snow




Tramway




Tongil street
, amazingly 120 meter wide



Another tramway




Clearing snow




Food stall




Ice skating




New trolleybus




Inside shop!




Barber




Telephone box



10. Collection of vehicles

11. Trade port city

12. Trip through western province


Market




Rrepair shop




Election campaign



13. Completely preserved town


Train station built by South




Construction site




Boys




Suburbs, people washing clothes



14. 150-day campaign


Schoolchildren




Newspaper kiosk




Repair of restaurant



15. Hot springs

16. Large Buddhist temple

17. Fragment of Great Wall

18. Election day


Ballot paper




Fruit vendor




Shoe shop



19. Ryugyong hotel

20. City near Chinese border


Lorries




Boats




Farms




"No-ox carts"




Country bus




Food delivery at procurement center




Street vendor




Fruit kiosk




Ice skating




Traffic check




Compost production competition
, rare competition in collecting of human excrement.

What if the Soviet Union had beaten the US to the Moon?




  • List of long-duration crews on space station  This is pretty obvious that soviets have conquer in mind.
  • There was no soviet space agency. There was at least two space programs competing with each other.
  • This is obvious, soviet space program needed to be shaped differently. First and foremost - Chief Designer was dead. Without Von Braun there would be no moon landing, either.
  • Scientific part of Apollo program was almost completely worthless and absolutely neglected. Only geologist (only scientist?) was abroad Apollo 17, in last mission. All the rest was space cowboys. You could scoop moon rock using robots for fraction of the costs. I sincerely don't believe that average American was more inspired for scientific research by Apollo program then average Egyptian goat herder by Pyramids.
  • The Bullwinkle oil platform being towed into the Gulf of Mexico


    It's still smaller than Troll A or Hibernia.
    Oil rocks were even more impressive with 5000 men living there and 200 km of streets.

    Cow


    This is photo from "Africa" by Sebastiano Salgado.
    It pictured Dinka people with Ankole-Watusi cattle.

    OECD


    "Country Club of United Nations"
    Don't be mistaken, OECD isn't political or economical union, which have power to rule over its members.
    It is just place, where representatives of chosen members may discuss issues of business, education, healthcare and cooperation.
    It doesn't have much value in the age of World Economic Forum and G-20 summits.
    OECD Factbook is totally must-have for anyone, who want to know current state of the world. It's simple, transparent and free.

    Losing a dollar


    "Economic ruin" is an exaggeration.

    It was played in Argentine and Russia and it wasn't so bad. Maybe 5 million Russians and maybe 4 million Argentinians have lived in extreme poverty for several years, but they are much better now. Maybe 20% of US citizens would end living for $2 a day, but it could be good learning experience, how to live frugally.

    Ageing os a country


    I wan't to underline one thing.

    See This, where South Korea is making transition from country ageing and losing percentage of agricultural workers. This is only road to high income country. Every high-income country, beside Kuwait, Brunei and United Emirates has median age over 30 and every of these has less than 10% workers in agriculture. countries like Greece or Portugal face real problem, because they have to change their workforce structure or they be left behind. Countries like Czech or Slovak Republic should reach as high income per person as UK or Canada. Countries like Vietnam or Bangladesh could recreate slide in South Korea style.

    Thursday 3 May 2012

    home births

    Less medical intervention during planned home birth is associated with a tripling of the neonatal mortality rate vs planned hospital birth, according to the results of a systematic review and meta-analysis reported online first July 1 and will appear in the September 10 print issue of the American Journal of Obstetrics & Gynecology

    India's Census: Lots of Cellphones, too Few Toilets

    Similarly in Nepal. 74% households have cellphones, 46% has a chair and 38% population practice open defecation.

    Ethiopian family planing


    Well, over half of women in urban areas (Addis Ababa especially) use modern contraception methods, over half of women with secondary education and sexually active unmarried women also. Actually women with secondary education have 1.9 children on average.
    On the other hand - poor, uneducated, married women living in rural areas don't have access to family planning. This is true for most of Sub-Saharan Africa.

    Sunday 12 February 2012

    Boko Haram

    This is not senseless at all. You have everything backwards. Boko Haram should have absolutely nothing against oil companies,

    Think education.Their name is "Western or non-Islamic education is a sin". Anyone who try to promote education in Nigeria is hated by half of the country. Boko Haram itself is killing for stating that Earth is a sphere, species evolved or rain comes from evaporated water.

    Galapagos tortoises




    They are from Taronga Zoo.

    This is her, it's a female, first and only child at the age of 90.

    Afghanistan survey

    This is survey's summary. It is still hot, only three months since publication, so it won't be implemented into World Bank statistics in a year. World Bank does much research, but not necessarily about public health.
    Fertility has dropped sharply (2 children per women less), with 20% of women using modern contraceptives. 60% of women use antenatal care. For working-age males mortality dropped by half and is lower than in Pakistan.
    Overall statistics are one step worse than in Pakistan, Nepal or Bangladesh, but this is tremendous improvement. I believe that Afghanistan has fastest improving HDI in history, so improvement in health are coupled with improvement in education or economy.