- And in NSW there's snow, wind, floods and locusts
SYDNEY - New South Wales residents must be wondering what they've done to annoy an increasingly erratic Mother Nature.Parts of the state recorded their coldest December morning in several decades yesterday as summer snow fell... シドニー - ニューサウスウェールズ州の住民は、状態はますます不安定なマザーNature.Partsを困らせるためにやった夏の雪が落ちて、昨日数十年の最も寒い12月の朝を記録不思議に思われる必要があります...
- Locusts in Melbourne
Australia's worst locust plague in 70 years has marched into metropolitan Melbourne as federal and state authorities met to consider their plan of attack. Federal Agriculture Minister Joe Ludwig met officials from New South Wales,... _NULL_
- The Day I Killed a Zombie on Forbes Magazine: A Future Reflection
March 16, 2012, Philadelphia International airport: 2012年3月16日、フィラデルフィア国際空港：
- Combatting stem rust: Uganda pest should give us food for thought | Editorial
With 800 million chronically undernourished, anything that reduces the food supply has potential for tragedyA lethal stem rust has spread to southern Africa's wheat crop. The fungus, identified in Uganda in 1999 and called Ug99, is a new contender in the long hot war between plant breeders and plant pests. Stem rust is an old enemy, but until Ug99 turned up, plant breeders had thought they were in the ascendant. The spread of yet another destructive element – along with drought, flood, locusts, windstorm and rising fuel costs – in the challenges that face the African farmer is a reminder of several things.One is that in a world in which 800 million people are chronically undernourished and more than 2 billion live on $2 a day, anything that reduces the food supply has potential for tragedy. A second is that agricultural science is a battle that can never be won outright. Any evolutionary biologist would have predicted the arrival of a new pathogen – and any evolutionary biologist would also predict that somewhere in the plant world there must already be genes resistant to the latest devastating pest. These genes must be identified, then spliced or bred into appropriate varieties and distributed to the blighted areas. All of which takes time, money, manpower and relentless scholarship.But the stem rust is a reminder of two more unforgiving facts of life. One is that as human population levels continue to rise, the farmland available to feed each individual on the planet continues to fall. Sooner or later, there could be a crisis of the kind predicted by Thomas Malthus more than 200 years ago. The reason there has been no Malthusian crisis so far is that as the population doubled, agricultural science tripled crop yields. Ominously, although yields are still increasing, t 800。慢性的食料供給を減らし、何かを栄養と南部アフリカの小麦の収穫に拡がっているtragedyA致。。錆の可能性があります
- Keeping the eurozone afloat | Claus Vistesen
Never mind the blame game, the EU needs to find a mechanism for handling economies that are close to defaultIf the current financial and economic turmoil has its origins in the US economy and its subprime mortgage debacle, most economists would now agree that its locus has slowly but surely moved to the EU and the eurozone. Specifically, the market's attention has zoomed in on the weaker members of the pack in the form of Greece, Spain and Ireland.Most recently, the situation in Greece and Spain has been the centre of attention and, especially in relation to Greece, the pressure has been mounting. The country now faces a tough administered reform package either pushed through by the EU or the IMF, its only alternative being an outright default that would have grave consequences not only for Greece, but also for the eurozone and the EU.In principle, however, none of the eurozone economies are in stellar economic form, but some are definitely in worse shape than others. For Greece and Spain the situation is simple. Years of above-average increases in inflation and wages have eroded competitiveness and produced large current account deficits. Coupled with ongoing budget deficits (to a lesser extent in Spain) this means that these economies have little or no defence against the adverse effects of a global financial crisis.However, this is not only about Greece and Spain. Portugal has the same symptoms as its southern European brethren. In particular, worries in the market point towards the fact that as the budget deficit in 2009 and 2010 is set to climb to close to 10% of national income and with a current account deficit in the region of 9% of GDP, Portugal may soon face the same headwinds as Greece as it tries to put its government bonds on the market in a grand scale.The _NULL_
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