Updated constantly with breaking World news and sport plus worldwide press releases The Earth Times covers global topics and politics plus the latest corporate, business and product news and reviews.

This is carried out by a hard working and dedicated team, committed to providing you with information and news, fluid and as it happens.

The Earth Times site also serves as a forum from ‘voices from the field or street’ – everyday men and women who are active agents of change and whose points of view are seldom heard in the mainstream media.

KRMEF was established in 2008 and provides the under privileged, disabled, and poor with an opportunity to work an organic biodynamic farm and allows them to be productive, while enabling their children to attend school. They look to save the local environment by using local manpower, local waste, and educating the local population about the benefits of protecting the environment. They have begun projects ranging from using recycling waste found in Kathmandu as building materials to sponsoring children to attend local schools.

The village was founded by Krishna Gurung and his wife Leela in memory of their late son Kevin Rohan who tragically passed away at the age of seven in 2008.

All KRMEFV intellectual property herein described is protected and commonly stewarded through the Heritable Innovation Trust rules and conditions set forth HERE.

Yesterday we received updates from Krishna at the Kevin Rohan Memorial Eco Foundation in Nepal.
1. Opening of The Clinic:
Volunteers have renovated the local club house into a clinic and started work there. They want to send a thank you out to all of the people worldwide who have helped them with money, medicine, physical work and ideas. A special thank you goes out to DR. R.M. Singh who has helped treat many of the local patients. The clinic runs every Thursday from 10am until the last patient is helped. They are also thankful and grateful to the Medical Service Management Trust in Nepal who supplied the clinic with medicines for cheaper cost. Most of the patients in the area suffer from chest infections or skin and abdominal problems.

2. Briquette and Solar Cooking Training:
The Foundation is constantly focused on saving the environment and looking for alternative ways of fuel. In order to relay the message to the villagers, the Foundation trained four people in briquette making and solar cooking methods at the Foundation for Sustainable Technology (FOST) in Kathmandu. Solar cookers and briquette press machines were given to the trainees. The briquettes are used for cooking in traditional Nepali clay ovens, reducing the amount of wood burned and thus reducing the deforestation rate of the area. They are created when the disabled and elderly collect and shred waste paper and mix it with sawdust. By using their feet they not only help to treat some of the symptoms of Leprosy but also create the bricks used in the fires.

3.Fruit Tree Plantation:
They started to plant a few trees in the name of different people who have visited the Foundation’s location. Volunteers helped to dig holes besides the renovated clinic.

4. Eco Guest House:
An Eco Guest House has been created at the Foundation for guests and well wishers. There is no staff at the guest house, however, Leela, (Kevin Rohan’s mother) treats everyone as if they are family. She is truly the mother for all the volunteers.

5. Sponsorship and School Painting:
The Foundation has been working hard to provide educational support to poor children. They support local schools by sponsoring children and providing the school with upgrades, from painting classrooms to monitory the staff in the ways of Waldorf inspired education to help maximize each student’s potential. They have sponsored four children this year, whose father passed away a year ago. Due to their family’s lack of a steady source of income they were unable to attend school until they entered the KRMEF school sponsorship program.

6. Developing Ecological Awareness:
After traveling to Washington D.C. in 2009 for the Green Festival, the KRMEF was inspired to promote green and make people aware of how it is to live green. They are working on Ecological sensitive construction using waste liquor bottles and local bammboos. They collect the bottles from restaurants in the city and recycle the bottles by creating walls.

7. Bio-Dynamic Activities:
Currently, The KRMEF is looking to develop Bio-Dynamic Agriculture in different areas. Following the Bio-Dynamic seminar in April 2010, they have visited Pokhara and Citwan with an organic certification specialist. They will be organizing Bio-Dynamic Agriculture seminars in Noevember 2010 in Kathmandu, Ittahai (East Nepal), and Pokhara (West Nepal). These seminars are to be facilitated by Sir Hans Mulder and Eneke.

8. Work On the Farm:
One of the initiatives on the farm at the KRMEF location is the harvesting of honey. They have two types of honey, butternut raw honey and buckweat raw honey. The butternut raw honey is harvested from the “Makawanpur” forest by the local farmers at Dang Valley and is directly bottled from the hive. The buckweat raw honey has a wonderful flavor and color. It is grown on terraces.

9. Soap, Nut, and Seed Jewelry:
Soapnuts have been grown and harvested in Nepal for centuries. The shell contains saponin, a natural and environmentally friendly detergent which is allergy free and is great to be used on infants, eczema, and sensitive skin.

Chief Scientist at Novacem, a London-based company, is working to eliminate those emissions with a cement that will absorb more carbon dioxide than is released during the manufacturing process. If done correctly, it can lock away as much as 100 kilograms of the greenhouse gas per ton.

As a graduate student at Imperial College in London, Nikolaos Vlasopoulos, says that when he added water to the magnesium compounds he found that he could still make a solid-setting cement that didn’t rely on carbon-rich limestone. As the formula hardened, atmospheric carbon dioxide reacted with the magnesium to make carbonates that strengthened the cement while trapping the gas. Vlasopoulos claims that with some refining the cement should be as strong as the Portland cement by Summer 2011. Vlasopoulos is not the only one attempting to reduce cement’s carbon footprint, Calera in Los Gatos, CA has begun initiatives to create additives for Portand cement rather than a replacement.

There are worries that Novacem will not be able to scale their production to industrial levels. Novacem will have to start persuading the mostly privately owned industry to begin using the new technology. They plan on building a new pilot plant to make its newly formulated cement using $1.5 million in cash from the Royal Society.

Learn more on Green Cement on Technology Review, published by MIT. >>

If you have contributions, suggestions or ideas, please comment below or send us an email at kad@m-cam.com and we’ll post it!

INTRODUCTION:

In the Arkhangai Province of Mongolia, Munkhbat Hasu, operator and proprietor of the Hasu Shivert Resort facility, has a unique perspective on the local agriculture situation. For the purposes of this challenge, we will focus on one aspect of the complex organization.

Munkhbat has realized that many of the local agriculture producers do not have access to cold storage facilities and therefore must immediately sell, use or preserve fresh vegetables.

During the summer growing season, farmers produce an abundance of fresh vegetables and deliver them to the city market. The abundance of vegetables is delivered to the market in a short period of time creating a large supply. Increased supply decreases the price of the goods because the market demand isn’t large enough to support the glut. Cold storage therefore would allow local farmers to store fresh vegetables and release them to the market year round, creating consistent supply that the market can support at an increased price.

THE CONTEXT:

In the context section, we start by analyzing what we see in abundance. This list is cursory, many things will be added throughout the challenge.

Commodity:
Large hillsides, electricity, rocks/dirt, arable land, buildings (house up to 200 people), dining facilities (house up to 250 people), greenhouses, equipment undetermined, grass, water, hot water, algae, racing horses, dairy products, vegetables, glass, sunlight, temperature differential, seasonal winds.

Custom/Culture:
The Hasu Shivert facility is located in the Arkhangai Aimag of Mongolia. The closest city market is at Tsetserleg. The Hasu Shivert facility is equipped with geothermal hot springs and many large hills. Agriculture is prevalent in the region and it is well known for dairy products. Horses on property are prized racing horses, some of the best in the aimag and the country.

Knowledge:
The approximate coordinates of the resort are:
-101°31’ longitude (E) 47°38’ latitude (N)
-In winter, the mean temperature is -30 °C to -38 °C (-22 °F to -36 °F) and in summer the highest temperature is between 25 °C and 36 °C (77 °F and 97 °F).
-The lowest recorded temperature is -42 °C in 2000-2001

Significant local knowledge of agriculture production and short term/non-matching debt issues, storage.

Local knowledge of large scale cold storage techniques is unknown.

Money:
Information is unknown at this time.

Technology:
Geothermal heating and electric (68 degrees C), greenhouses, housing/hotel facilities, equipment undetermined, soil composition unknown (good for root vegetables – potatoes, carrots, onions – greenhouses grow tomatoes and peppers).

Well-being:
In terms of agriculture production, the land is fertile and the farmers are consistently growing produce. The largest inhibitor of well being is a consistent market with a duration matched (planting to harvest) credit facility. Quality of dairy products and vegetables is extremely high. Most food and clothing in the area are completely organic.

THE CHALLENGE:
The first step of the challenge is to brainstorm ideas for on-site agriculture cold storage using what is already in abundance. It may be possible to bring in outside equipment, however the site is remote; tangible items that have to be transported would come at significant cost. Further steps in the challenge will aggregate the value contributed and begin an execution phase, the results of which will be published in the Global Innovation Commons.

Again, if you have contributions, suggestions or ideas, please comment below or send us an email at kad@m-cam.com and we’ll post it!

The government rescuers used the camera to find the miners 2,200 feet below ground. The camera system is 1.375 inch in diameter and can go to distances up to 5,000 feet. Aries manufactures a mine disaster camera system that has been used many times in the Virginia coal miners disasters. However, the borehole drilled in Chile was not large enough for that equipment.

Aries swept into action and sent the smaller camera system to Chile. All 33 miners were found alive and well. Jim Lenahan, president and CEO of Aries, said “We are very pleased to be able to offer our assistance in helping the families of these miners, offer some hope in knowing that they are ok, and that hopefully they will be getting out in a safe manner. It makes us feel really good to know we are helping save the lives of others in a very difficult underground environment”.

It is this type of innovation across industries that The Global Innovation Commons promotes. By thinking out of the box and using what companies have in excess we can provide solutions to almost every problem.

* All information was submitted to us by Cole Publishing. Aries is an advertising client of Cole Publishing. M-CAM and Cole Publishing are partners in various projects within The Global Innovation Commons and The Heritable Innovation Trust.

During the 2010 Heritable Innovation trust, the team experienced the use of ger stoves which are used in Mongolia to cook and heat living units. The ger stove is a very efficient structure for cooking and heating; however Mongolia, like India, experiences a large amount of pollution from the stoves. Research of different heating fuels and feedstocks could smooth the way for technological application.

“The X PRIZE Foundation, an educational non-profit that designs and administers competitions with prizes of up to $30 million, the Government of India’s Ministry of New and Renewable Energy (MNRE) and the Indian Institute of Technology Delhi have formed a partnership to create a global competition to develop and deploy clean and efficient cookstoves. The competition will focus on the development of affordable and clean-burning cookstove technologies (and possibly delivery models) and is a part of the MNRE’s National Biomass Cookstoves Initiative, which was launched in December 2009. Details of the competition, including the announcement of the launch date, prize purse and competition guidelines are forthcoming.”

Learn more at the X Prize site: HERE

The situation is definitely unprecedented and while the World Bank has raised its funding for the flood disaster relief by and $100 Million, with out interest obligations, because according to officials Pakistan could be facing a “triple threat”. People have lost their crops, and their incomes leaving a lot of the population hungry, homeless, and desperate. On top of this, the floods have affected 8.6 million children through the waterborne diseases.

With the additional aid, the governments of Pakistan, could look into the Global Innovation Commons and use the clean water and world health open source technology. This way technology can be deployed immediately at a lower cost than using most proprietary technology. Lets see how we can help the people of Pakistan.

________________________________________________________________
Sources:
~http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-south-asia-10889925
~http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/picturegalleries/worldnews/7975364/Pakistan-floods-children-at-risk-from-deadly-water-borne-diseases-such-as-cholera-and-malaria.html
~http://english.aljazeera.net/news/asia/2010/09/20109235641612591.html

Edinburgh Napier’s Biofuel Research Centre has spent the last two years developing this fuel. Recently they received $400,000 from the Scottish Enterprise’s “Proof of Concept” program, “which supports the pre-commercialization of leading-edge technologies emerging from Scotland’s university research institutes”.

The whiskey industry is said to produce 1,600 million liters of pot ale and 187,000 tones of draft every year. The Edinburgh Center uses the whiskey by-products provided by Diageo’s Glenkinchie Distillery. Eventually they plan to create a spin-out company to take the new fuel to market.

Learn More On This Story and More on “The Energy Collective”. >>

“The heat in the upper six miles of the earth’s crust contains 50,000 times as much energy as found in all the world’s oil and gas reserves combined. Despite this abundance, only 10,700 megawatts of geothermal electricity generating capacity have been harnessed worldwide.
Partly because of the dominance of the oil, gas, and coal industries, which have been providing cheap fuel by omitting the costs of climate change and air pollution from fuel prices, relatively little has been invested in developing the earth’s geothermal heat resources. Over the last decade, geothermal energy has been growing at scarcely 3 percent a year.
Roughly half the world’s existing generating capacity is in the United States and the Philippines. Indonesia, Mexico, Italy, and Japan account for most of the remainder. Altogether some 24 countries now convert geothermal energy into electricity. El Salvador, Iceland, and the Philippines respectively get 26, 25, and 18 percent of their electricity from geothermal power plants.
The potential of geothermal energy to provide electricity, to heat homes, and to supply process heat for industry is vast. Among the countries rich in geothermal energy are those bordering the Pacific in the so-called Ring of Fire, including Chile, Peru, Colombia, Mexico, the United States, Canada, Russia, China, Japan, the Philippines, Indonesia, and Australia. Other geothermally rich countries include those along the Great Rift Valley of Africa, such as Kenya and Ethiopia, and those around the Eastern Mediterranean.
Beyond geothermal electrical generation, an estimated 100,000 thermal megawatts of geothermal energy are used directly—without conversion into electricity—to heat homes and greenhouses and as process heat in industry. This includes, for example, the energy used in hot baths in Japan and to heat homes in Iceland and greenhouses in Russia.
An interdisciplinary team of 13 scientists and engineers assembled by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 2006 assessed U.S. geothermal electrical generating potential. Drawing on the latest technologies, including those used by oil and gas companies in drilling and in enhanced oil recovery, the team estimated that enhanced geothermal systems could be used to massively develop geothermal energy. This technology involves drilling down to the hot rock layer, fracturing the rock and pumping water into the cracked rock, then extracting the superheated water to drive a steam turbine. The MIT team notes that with this technology the United States has enough geothermal energy to meet its energy needs 2,000 times over.”

Read More of Brown’s Article on TreeHugger>>

In Ulaanbaatar a tripartite meeting was held in the Mongolian Academy of Sciences yesterday. The meeting was attended by Professor B. Enkhtuvshin, President of Mongolian Academy of Sciences (MAS), Mr. Ch. Otgochuluu, Director of Economic Competitiveness Policy and Research Center (ECRC) and Ms. D. Nergui, Founding CEO of M-ICP.

All parties agreed to cooperate in the area of mutual interest for development of Mongolia through innovation promotion and innovation commercialization. During this meeting Professor B. Enkhtuvshin expressed his personal appreciation for M-ICP initiative to create an environment for greater access of Mongolian businesses, government, and communities to global knowledge and technologies, for ensuring increased access of the rest of world for Mongolian heritable innovation and for M-ICP plan in partnership with M-CAM, USA to create innovation financing infrastructure, infrastructure for trade-credit offsets in particular.

Parties agreed to support the government initiative to organize a High level workshop on “Innovation and Technology” in September 2010 and agreed to invite M-CAM leadership to this workshop.

At the end of this meeting it was agreed to sign Memorandum of Understanding on cooperation between MAS and M-ICP.

Mongolian Academy of Sciences has decades of history and is the main science and technology institution of Mongolia with 21 research institutes and centers.

Economic Competitiveness Policy and Research Center was founded in 2010 with the primary goal of producing Mongolia Competitiveness Report jointly with World Competitiveness Center in Switzerland. ECRC is one of Alliances of M-ICP.