ICIS News
January 2004
In this issue:
Editorial
Environmental
- Iter – fusion power
- World’s first wave energy turbine
- Bus line in Boston
- A new UK windmill park
- Rapeseed power
Social and ethical – main story
- Hunger...
- ... and Obesity
Business
- Windmill merger
- Invest ethically
Mind
- The sound of one hand clapping
Design & Architecture
- Healthy computer design
- The cell killer
ICIS Activities
Contact ICIS
ICIS CENTRE
Hornbækgaard
Hornbækgaardsvej 2
DK-3100 Hornbæk
Tel (+45) 49 70 43 64
NEW e-mail address: center@iciscenter.org
Editorial
Dear Reader
Happy New Year!
Main Story: One cannot help but dwell on the grotesque and upsetting aspects of the reports that make up the main story of this newsletter, where the bottom line is that many millions of people are dying from lack of food while millions will die from eating too much. That the barrier to the solution and the rebalancing of our world is manmade and that you and I are involved whether we like it or not.
We have to act to make a difference. People who are hungry cannot act. So it is our responsibility. We created the problem. We must solve it. What can we do?
Well, we can start by eating less and cutting out junkfoods. Spend more money buying better quality ecological products. Drink Max Havelaar coffee and support their and other ethically based products. Support NGO’s.. Get involved politically. Let our voices be heard and make a stand for what we believe in. Think about what we do more often. Stop and think.
If any of you have more or better ideas please write and let us know!
ICIS News will become more international this coming year with
contributions from people around the world, reporting on sustainability issues. If you should be interested in contributing a news item from your part of the world let us know. The topics we are interested in fall under the headings: environmental, social, ethical, business, spiritual, design and architecture.
We welcome your suggestions and contributions!
ICIS 2004 Programme. ICIS has received funding from the EU for a yearlong educational programme for young Danish design professionals, in partnership with the Association for Danish Designers.
The programme consists of 5 modules which will deal with various aspects of
current and future design practices both nationally and internationally: cutting edge design, business cultures, sustainability, CSR, creativity, innovation, networking, crossdisciplinary partnerships and working teams, personal development and leadership training.
The introductiory meeting is on the 3rd of February in Copenhagen.
Contact Helle on helle@iciscenter.org for more information.
Karen Blincoe
Director, ICIS
Environmental
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Iter - fusion power
The EU has given go-ahead for a new experiment on environmentally friendly power. A fusion reactor, Iter, is to be built near Aix-Provence in France.
The reactor will transform hydrogen into helium, similar to the sun which converts 600 million tons of hydrogen into helium every second, producing enough heat and energy to illuminate and warm this planet from 90 million miles away!
The heat generated from the fusion of two hydrogen atoms - making the helium molecule - is enormous and is envisioned to be one solution to the energy problem in the future as this conversion produces no greenhouse gasses, no soot and no radioactive waste. As the oceans consist of hydrogen the energy would be sustainable. However, the Iter plant is another step in the research process and a viable powerplant is 30 years away.
Source: The Guardian, 27 November 2003 (see also ICIS NeWS May 2003)
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World’s first wave energy turbine
The world’s first wave energy turbine was launched in June last year off the coast of Devon, UK. It is estimated that the turbine will produce around 300 kW of electricity.
The marine turbine project, also a testing bed, is expected to be the first of many marine current turbines. If it works well, the potential is vast.
The marine current turbine is similar in principle to a windmill, in that it draws energy from the currents of the water in the same way that a windmill uses air currents. The ocean currents are more reliable than wind currents and the wave turbine is less obtrusive to the landscape. The blades rotate at about 20 revolutions per minute, so there is little harm to fish and other marine life.
The project is financed by the Department of Trade and Industry and the European Commission’s energy program.
Source: BBC News, Monday, 16 June 2003
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Bus line in Boston
North America's problems with urban pollution has sometimes been expressed this way: "When a three-year-old boy inhales sooty fumes from a Boston city bus, he is more likely than his mother or father to suffer an asthma attack."
But, said Howard Ross at MBTA (Mass. Bay Transportation Authority station), why not just change the buses? This year, the first electric bus without any need for charging stops will start its 6.5 km circle passing Boston's Hyde Park.
The buses are automatically charged in just a few minutes, during a stop over a plate with electro magnets in the street. This charges the battery by induction, a principle discovered by Maxwell and Ørsted in the 19th century, and thus greatly reduces the weight of the car battery.
It remains to be seen if the plates' emission of 7-8 kW signals may cause electric interference, or if magnetic radiation harmful to humans or animals will occur (in the street). Ross has tested watches, optical disks and credit cards, which seem to be unaffected by the magnetic fields.
The Boston bus costs around 30 percent more than conventional busses, but a life-cycle analysis proves it to be 30 percent cheaper over its lifetime, not least due to the fact that the electricity consumption stays 60 percent lower than the comparable price of diesel oil. Not to speak of the environmental benefit.
Source: New Scientist, »His bus will run and run«, 24 May 2003
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A new UK windmill park
A new windmill park has been completed off the coast of North Wales in England. It consists of thirty winddriven turbines which can supply approx 50.000 homes a year with electricity (www.switchtojuice.com).
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Rapeseed power
Samsø is an island off the mainland of Jutland in Denmark.
The island proclaimed some years back that it wanted to become 100% energy sustainable. Several measures have been taken over the years to reach this goal and from being able to cover 15-20% of its energy consumption a few years back it now supplies 100% of its electricity needs and 60% of its heating needs from sustainable sources. The latest development is the installation of a rapeseed oil press used in the production of rapeseed oil for fuel for transport purposes.
Source: the Copenhagen Post, 19-31 December 2003
ICIS: Rape, by the way, is almost as versatile a crop as hemp. Rapeseed oil is used in cooking, the kernels are a good source of protein and used as i.e. cattlefeed. The rape when in bloom is a wonderful source of nectar, the essence of honey. The fields are a feast for the eyes, bright yellow and to the Northern farmers the first crop of the year – to the rest of us the first sign of summer.
Social and Ethical - main story
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Hunger...
Nearly 850 million people go to bed hungry every night – mostly in the developing countries. The FAO has recently issued figures on the situation stating that the number of undernourished people increases by 5 mio each year and has done so since the midnineties. The pledge by the UN in 1996 was to reduce the number of malnourished people by 50% by 2015. As is seen from the latest report this is not happening. FAO says in its report: ‘bluntly stated, the problem is not so much a lack of food as a lack of political will’.
The world has for a long time been able to feed its inhabitants. However, world hunger has for decades been manmade due to wars, especially civil wars. Countries like Burundi, Afganistan, Somalia and Sierra Leone, where hunger is specifically rife have endured many years of political unrest and civil wars.
People in Iraq have also – and are still suffering through political unrest and wars, as are people in many other underdeveloped countries. Diseases like aids have aggravated the hunger problem as have climate disasters like floods and droughts.
The countries with most hunger are those who rely mostly on agriculture.
Reduction of hunger lies therefore in the hands of many Western leaders i.e. the US, the EU and Japan. As long as the protection and subsidies of farmers continue, agriculture in the developing world stands no chance of changing the situation. The local products are undercut on the local market by cheap imports and they cannot compete on the international markets due to Western subsidies and protection policies.
In a few countries hunger has been reduced i.e. in China, Bangladesh and Haiti.
According to FAO the reason has been long periods of political stability, rapid growth in the agricultural sectors, slowdown of population growth and lower levels of HIV infection.
Source: The Independent, 26 November 2003
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... and Obesity
The International Obesity Taskforce warned recently that that 40% of British adults could be obese within a single generation. The trend affects children as well and is daunting with hundreds of thousands of children getting obesity related diseases like diabetes. This is not unique to the UK. It is a growing trend in the US and in Europe and it is epidemic.
The US government’s public health agency, the Centers for Disease Control publicises a yearly chart showing the rise in obesity state by state. In 1957 the chart was showing a small percentage of obesity rating between 5 and 10 percent. In 1997 some states i.e. Mississippi, Indiana and Kentucky showed 20% obesity and by 2001 this had increased to a rate of more than 25%.
Research shows that the cause of obesity is mainly due to a poor diet on fatty, salty, processed foods combined with lack of exercise.
The more sedentary Western way of life with many hours of TV and video watching, internet access and computer games contributes to this as well as the reliance on the car rather than physical activity (walking).
In the UK the House of Commons Health Select Committee has recently been conducting an investigation into obesity as one in five people in Britain is now classed as overweight, and both politicians, health experts and researchers are trying to assess the reason why and what to do about it.
The committee is considering whether to recommend a ban on high sugar, high fat products and put health warnings on foods like McDonald’s super size meals. The producers, however, claim that marketing and advertising of ‘super size’ is not the problem but that the cause could be the hidden calories in foods people consider low-fat! Advertising, they say, does not make people eat more but encourage them to switch brands.
Campaigners say the opposite, that the very intense and persuasive marketing of sweets, crisps, fast foods and soft drinks encourage people to increase intake of snacks and subsequently eat the wrong foods.
Sources: The Independent magazine, 29 November 2003
Business
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Windmill merger
The two biggest windmill companies is Denmark, Vestas and NEG Micon have merged and become the world’s largest producer of windmills.
The merger seems a sensible and logic development now that both European and US corporations are ready to enter the windmill market at large scale (e.g. GE Electric). It will be interesting to follow this next chapter in the development and furthering
of alternative energy sources.
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Invest ethically
Danish pension schemes have started to invest in ethically correct companies and actives.
This is not unique to Denmark. In the rest of Scandinavia as well as in England, this trend becomes more and more widespread.
A few years ago you were thought to be naive investing in enivronmentally and ethically orientated investment schemes. This is changing as the performance of these schemes are turning out to be more profitable, or as profitable as investing in the so-called traditional companies, as yet another recent analysis has shown.
Source: Borsen, January 2004 (www.borsen.dk)
Mind
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The sound of one hand clapping the universe
Do you know of all those fractal visualizations of complex natural processes that can trigger the eye and the mind? Now is the time for sound. The sound of the creation of the universe.
This newsletter started with fusion power. Fusion mimics processes that occur at large scale in the universe, fx. on the sun. How did it all start? Physicist and astronomers generally agree on the idea of a "Big Bang" about 14 billion years ago.
The astrophysicist John G. Cramer tells that a reader of his column in Analog Science Fiction & Fact Magazine, asked if the "Sound of the Big Bang" he'd mentioned in his column was actually recorded anywhere, so that one could listen to it?
'The short answer is "no", but the question set me to thinking: "Why not?" ... I'm an experienced user of the symbolic algebra program Mathematica, which provides the user with the capability of making mathematical functions into sound.’
John went on:
‘So ... I sat down and wrote a 16 line Mathematica notebook that produces a simulation of the "sound of the Big Bang", based on WMAP data. I used their power spectrum to combine a set of sine waves with amplitudes equal to the histogram areas of their points, modulated this with the measured profile of the emission of the original cosmic background radiation, and shifted the frequencies down as time to the 2/3 power, the rate of growth of the radius of the universe in the early Big Bang.'
The resulting simulated sound of the Big Bang as wave or mpeg-file can be heard at http://staff.washington.edu/seymour/altvw104.html.
Cramer says that 'our present “standard model” view of Big Bang cosmology tells us that the Big Bang started from a tiny point which explosively unfolded to become our universe. In the first few picoseconds of the Big Bang, for reasons that are not understood, the universe expanded very rapidly in a process described as “exponential inflation”. During this inflationary period, the diameter of the universe increased much faster than the speed of light.' Believe it or not.
Design & Architecture
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Healthy computer design
Jonathan Ive won last year’s ’Designer of the Year’ award, inaugurated by the London Design Museum. The £25,000 are awarded annually to the person who contributed the most to design in the previous year. Jonathan Ive has worked for Apple Computer in California for the past decade and is responsible for the recent line of elegantly designed iMacs as well as the iPod music players, a style which has inspired a similar look in numerous recent products in display design as well as within the household, including electronic equipment and kitchen utensils.
ICIS: Congratulations, Ive and Apple. But design is not just about the look, feel and functionality of equipment. Apple luckily belongs to the good guys who ruled out PVC in the wiring, as well as brominated flame retardants in the slick cabinets, way before EU regulations will force producers to quit two of the most health endangering retardants later this year (ref. Apple website info).
Such retardants are actually emitted through the air, and the user is thus exposed to the hazardous gases while working. Pvc is ‘only’ a problem as it becomes waste – or if kids chew it. But who would want to throw out an old mac anyway, when you could still use it, or donate it to Africa?) The general responsibility for recycling of electronic units in the EU will be switched to producers next year – and PC’s, even more so than Macs, are easily disassembled and still functioning parts are reusable.
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The cell killer
In the Danish press Dr. Sianette Kwee, Senior Lecturer Sianette Kwee of the Institute of Bio Chemistry at Århus University states that the radiowaves from both antennas and mobile cell phones are potentially harmful as the waves cause cell changes and may cause cancer. The researcher refers to both her own research and research carried out in Sweden which show that brain cancer, on the side of the brain where the mobile telephone is placed, is significantly more frequent and that this type of cancer targets young people between the ages of 26-29.
The radiowaves, Kwee states, affect the cells of brain and body, and as children’s brains are not fully developed until the age of 16, any minor damage can have a serious adverse effect with time. The researcher also claims that the underplaying of the gravity of this is due to political and economic pressures as UMTS-licenses for the new powerful 3G generation of mobile technology were sold before the technology had been sufficiently tested.
A source on the effects of mobile phone stations is the research by John Moulder, Professor of Radiation Oncology, Medical College of Wisconsin.
http://www.mcw.edu/gcrc/cop/cell-phone-health-FAQ/toc.html
Source: Morgenavisen Jyllands-Posten, 7 November 2003
ICIS: Norway is currently considering a ban on cell phone use by pre-teens, for physical and social health reasons.
Technology is neither”bad” nor can it solve all of our problems or take care of all our needs. French urban theorist Paul Virilio warns of the increasing acceleration of technological innovation in his new book Art & Fear. Virilio’s idea is that sometimes hybris strikes back with catastrophical consequences when technology gets out of hand, such as with the Chernobyl nuclear meltdown, and with the Asian monetary crisis created by the late 90’s robot-driven stock trading.
ICIS Activities
The ICIS 2004 programme includes:
- Young Designers’ development programme in partnership with the Association of Danish Designers
- 6 sustainable architecture master classes
- International master classes, possibly starting in Australia this summer
- Design master classes
- There is an introductory meeting in Copenhagen on 3d February 2004 about the Young Designers’ Programme.
The year-long programme will include both international issues, personal development issues, sustainability issues, networking issues and many other elements of interest.
To participate in the intro meeting for the Young Designers' development programme on 3d February, please contact Helle Kongsted:
helle@iciscenter.org or phone (+45) 49 70 43 64.
Contact ICIS
New e-mail address for ICIS NeWS:
info@iciscenter.org
Sign up for short ICIS NeWS regularly (by e-mail)
ICIS NeWS editors:
Karen Blincoe & Henning Wettendorff