amudu

Monday, October 17, 2011

The Worst Kind of Poverty: Energy Poverty

Vendors in a market in Abidjan, Ivory Coast, use candles during a power outage. Over 95% of those without electricity are either in sub-Saharan Africa or developing Asia

Issouf Sanogo / AFP / Getty Images

COMMENTI want you to try to imagine what it's like to live without electricity. It's boring, for one thing — no television, no MP3 player, no video games. And it's lonely and disconnected as well — no computer, no Internet, no mobile phone. You can read books, of course — but at night you won't have light, other than the flicker of firewood. And about that firewood — you or someone in your family had to gather it during the day, taking you away from more productive work or schooling, and in some parts of the world, exposing you to danger. That same firewood is used to cook dinner, throwing off smoke that can turn the air inside your home far more toxic than that breathed in an industrial city. You may lack access to vaccines and modern drugs because the nearest hospital doesn't have regular power to keep the medicine refrigerated. You're desperately poor — and the lack of electricity helps to ensure that you'll stay that way.

That's life for the 1.3 billion people around the planet who lack access to the grid. It's overwhelmingly a problem of the developing world and the countryside — more than 95% of those without electricity are either in sub-Saharan Africa or developing Asia, and 84% live in rural areas. Though it hasn't gotten the attention that global problems like HIV/AIDS and malaria have received in recent years, lack of power remains a major obstacle to any progress in global development.(See photos of new ways to boost energy efficiency.)

"Lacking access to electricity affects health, well-being and income," says Fatih Birol, the chief economist of the International Energy Agency (IEA). "It's a problem the world has to pay attention to."

Fortunately that attention is finally forthcoming. The U.N. has already declared 2012 the International Year of Sustainable Energy for All, and on Oct. 10 the IEA released a special report that details the problem of energy access and outlines how a universal power grid might be financed. The need for clean cooking stoves — 2.7 billion people lack them, an offshoot of the energy-access problem — is rising up the development agenda as well. The experts' analyses about how solvable these problems are is surprisingly sunny: according to the IEA's analysis, it would be possible to achieve universal energy access for the world by 2030 with around $48 billion a year in global investment. "We very much have the capacity to make a difference in this field," says Birol, who has worked for years to call attention to electricity access. No one needs to stay in the dark.

At a time when even developed countries are feeling poor — or at least poorer than they once were — $48 billion a year sounds like a fair chunk of change, but it actually only amounts to about 3% of yearly global energy investment, which should give you a sense of just how vast the worldwide energy industry is. But right now the world is falling well short of that necessary target — perhaps $9 billion a year is currently invested in shrinking the energy gap, with much of it coming from foreign aid and other public sources that are unlikely to grow in a straitened global economy. Nearly all of that investment goes toward improving grid access in urban areas, which leaves those in rural villages out of luck. Even if investment rises to $14 billion a year, the IEA expects that 1 billion people will still be without power in 2030. "What's being done now clearly isn't enough," says Birol.(See photos of power in cities.)

And the problem will get worse rapidly thanks to rising oil prices, which could put a crimp in development. It's worth noting that when rich nations were at roughly the same economic stage as developing countries are today, oil cost an average of around $22 per barrel. Though the price has fluctuated recently, the $100-a-barrel threshold is increasingly being crossed. For developing countries that are net oil importers, those high prices can quickly eat up a national budget; oil-import bills in sub-Saharan Africa, for example, went up by $2.2 billion in 2010, more than one-third higher than the increase in official development aid. Environmentalists sometimes welcome higher energy prices as a spur to conservation and efficiency, but that's true mostly in rich countries; in developing, energy-starved ones, high prices can be economically crippling.

Beyond ensuring that there's more overall investment in closing the energy gap, there's the question of how the money should be spent. The tendency has been toward big projects — major fossil-fuel plants and electrical transmission lines. That sort of infrastructure can serve cities well, but it's not going to reach the rural villagers that are the most energy-starved — not to mention the fact that it's not the best idea to lock in carbon-heavy power sources in a warming world. That's where renewables might have a practical advantage, as well as an environmental one. Solar power can be installed quickly and cheaply far off the grid, providing enough power for light and basic services — and it's not as if sub-Saharan Africa is lacking for sunlight. With smart and green investment, the IEA believes that achieving universal energy access would increase global carbon emissions by only 0.7% by 2030 — a drop in the climate bucket. "Solar is going to play a huge role in improving energy access," says Birol. "It's one of the best ways to meet challenges off the grid."

Energy poverty is, of course, only a piece of larger economic poverty, but it's one of the best ways out of it too. If you need one more reminder of that fact — and of how radical the difference is between the world's haves and have-nots — take a look at a satellite photograph of earth at night, with large swathes of the planet radiating light and other stretches cloaked in darkness, an electric map of wealth and poverty. The very least we can do is wake up to the fact that everyone deserves a light.

Rising Food Prices - Nearly One Billion Go to Bed Hungry

Put Food First - Every day nearly 1 billion people go to bed hungry. Rising and volatile food prices are causing pain and suffering for poor people around the world, driving 44 million people into extreme poverty in recent months. We need to find solutions to ensure everyone has enough nutritious food now and in the years to come.

Researchers invent tiny artificial muscles with the strength, flexibility of elephant trunk

by Biomechanism

An international team of researchers has invented new strong enough to rotate objects a thousand times their own weight, but with the same flexibility of an or .

In a paper published online today on Science Express, the scientists and engineers from the , the in Australia, the and detail their innovation. The study elaborates on a discovery made by research fellow at the University of Wollongong.

Using yarns of that are enormously strong, tough and highly flexible, the researchers developed artificial muscles that can rotate 250 degrees per millimetre of muscle length. This is more than a thousand times that of available artificial muscles composed of , or , a class of materials that can hold both positive and negative electric charges, even in the absence of voltage.

“What’s amazing is that these barely visible yarns composed of fibres 10,000 times thinner than a human hair can move and rapidly rotate objects two thousand times their own weight,” says Assoc. Prof. , .

Madden says, “While not large enough to drive an arm or power a car, this new generation of artificial muscles – which are simple and inexpensive to make – could be used to make , , , and for use in , and perhaps even to propel tiny objects inside the bloodstream.”

Central to the team’s success are nanotubes that are spun into helical yarns, which means that they have left and right handed versions, which allows the yearn to be controlled by applying an , and to twist and untwist.

The new material was devised at the University of Texas at Dallas and then tested as an artificial muscle in Madden’s lab at UBC. A chance discovery by collaborators from Wollongong showed the enormous twist developed by the device. Guided by theory at UBC and further experiments in Wollongong and Texas, the team was able to extract considerable torsion and power from the yarns.

The torsional rotation of helically wound muscles, such as those in the flagella of bacteria, has existed in nature for hundreds of millions of years. Many other natural appendages – from the trunk of an elephant to octopus’s powerful and limber tentacles – also show how helically wound muscle fibers cause rotation by contracting against a boneless core.

The nanotube yarns are activated by charging them in a salt solution, much as a battery is charged. A breakthrough discovery came from former UBC PhD student – now at Stanford – who found that the deformation of the yarns is proportional to the size and number of ions inserted. A similar effect is seen in used in , but in yarns it is put to good use. The helical structure of the yarns makes them unwind as they accept charge and swell. They twist back up again when discharged.

“The discovery, characterization, and understanding of these high performance torsional motors show the power of international collaborations,” says corresponding author , Robert A. Welch Professor of Chemistry and director of the University of Texas at Dallas .

___________

Support for this research includes a from the .