I hope more people will change their perception of a vehicle, seeing it as ameans of transport and not a reflection of the driver's status.
The long-awaited dream of an eco-car will become a reality next year. The possibility has given hope to many middleincome earners that they may this time be able to afford a low-priced eco-friendly car.
Some carmakers, however, seem to start from scratch by trying to explain that the word "eco" does not come from "economy" but is short for "ecology".
What that means is this type of car will have less CO2 emission, stipulated at no more than 120 grammes per kilometre. Moreover, fuel consumption will not exceed 5 litres per 100km.
To achieve that level of "greenness",the car engine must be smaller than those popular in the Thai market, meaning that it would not exceed 1,300cc for petrol and 1,400cc for diesel.
Automobile firms have invested at least 5 billion baht in the eco-car project in Thailand. If they are able to manufacture 100,000 units of the above criteria by the fifth year, they will get tax and tariff incentives from the Board of Investment. Six firms have been approved for the project, but currently only Nissan has announced that it will move ahead according to plan, rolling out its first eco-car on to the Thai market in March next year.
The government wants to see ecocars available at prices starting below 400,000 baht, lower than the current offers on the market, but carmakers insist that the price would not be that low because the cost of high technology and research and development required to produce the cleaner car is very expensive.
It's true that a little bit of help from everyone to save the environment is essential for the overall public amidst rising concern about global warming.The eco-car should be one way that an individual - a member of the middleclass, to be specific - in Thailand can make their contribution. The problem is that consumers in the current sluggish economy may see only the "eco" as in the economy side of things, not ecology,as their first priority when considering buying a new car. If the price is not attractive enough, consumers may opt for a cheaper vehicle that provides them with mobility despite being much less green. Is it possible for both the government and the private sector to cooperate in adjusting an "economy" price into the upcoming "ecology" car?
With the launch of the eco-car project,I hope that my dream of seeing many models of small-engine cars available in the market will come true. I always envy people in some European countries or Japan where people can have a variety of choice when it comes to small cars from different brands.
Here in Thailand, the lowest possible engine that consumers can find is 1,500cc.Smaller cars have faced many episodes of unsuccessful introduction. The 1,300cc Ford Aspire hit the market over a decade ago but its sale lasted only a few years.Toyota launched its Indonesia-made 1,300cc Avanza about five years ago but the small-engine vehicle could not survive in the Thai market so the company had to replace it with the 1,500cc Avanza. An earlier model with the smallest-engine,the 900cc Daihatsu Mira, faced the same fate. I don't know if the disappearance of small-engine cars in Thailand was the result of insincerity on the manufacturers' or dealers' part to maintain continuous sales and service, or a genuine lack of consumer interest in low-engine models. There is an observation in Thailand that many times people are judged by the type of vehicle they drive. Those going about in fancy European brands may get better recognition than those who drive about in general Asian brands.The same person gets a different treatment from others only because that person changes his/her car. A painful reality!
I hope that the government-backed eco-car project will be a success when the launch time arrives. I hope that more and more people will change their perception towards the image of the vehicle,seeing it as a means of transport and not a reflection of the driver's status, so people driving small cars can rest assured that they will still receive equal treatment in society. Let's drive a small car and help save our planet.
Thursday, November 12, 2009
Magnificent seven
In the most important, most revered event since the invention of the brontosaurus trap,Microsoft shipped the most incredibly fabulous operating system ever made; the release of Windows 7 also spurred a new generation of personal computers of all sizes at prices well below last month's offers.The top reason Windows 7 does not suck: There is no registered website called Windows7Sucks.com
Kindle e-book reader maker Amazon.com and new Nook e-book reader vendor Barnes and Noble got it on; B&N got great reviews for the "Kindle killer"Nook, with dual screens and touch controls so you can "turn" pages, plays MP3s and allows many non-B&N book formats, although not the Kindle one;Amazon then killed the US version of its Kindle in favour of the international one, reduced its price to $260(8,700 baht), same as the Nook; it's not yet clear what you can get in Thailand with a Nook, but you sure can't (yet) get much, relatively speaking, with a Kindle;but here's the biggest difference so far,which Amazon.com has ignored: the Nook lets you lend e-books to any other Nook owner, just as if they were paper books; the borrowed books expire on the borrower's Nook in two weeks.
Phone maker Nokia of Finland announced it is suing iPhone maker Apple of America for being a copycat; lawyers said they figure Nokia can get at least one, probably two per cent (retail) for every iPhone sold by Steve "President for Life" Jobs and crew via the lawsuit,which sure beats working for it -$6 (200 baht) to $12(400 baht) on 30 million phones sold so far, works out to $400 million or 25 percent of the whole Apple empire profits during the last quarter;there were 10 patent thefts, the Finnish executives said, on everything from moving data to security and encryption.
Nokia of Finland announced that it is one month behind on shipping its new flagship N900 phone, the first to run on Linux software; delay of the $750(25,000 baht) phone had absolutely no part in making Nokia so short that it had to sue Apple, slap yourself for such a thought.
Tim Berners-Lee, who created the World Wide Web, said he had one regret:the double slash that follows the "http:"in standard web addresses; he estimated that 14.2 gazillion users have wasted 48.72 bazillion hours typing those two keystrokes, and he's sorry; of course there's no reason to ever type that, since your browser does it for you when you type "www.bangkokpost.com" but Tim needs to admit he made one error in his lifetime.
The International Telecommunication Union of the United Nations, which doesn't sell any phones or services, announced that there should be a mobile phone charger that will work with any phone; now who would ever have thought of that, without a UN body to wind up a major study on the subject?;the GSM Association estimates that 51,000 tonnes of chargers are made each year in order to keep companies able to have their own unique ones.
The Well, Doh Award of the Week was presented at arm's length to the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development; the group's deputy secretary-general Petko Draganov said that developing countries will miss some of the stuff available on the Internet if they don't install more broadband infrastructure; a report that used your tax baht to compile said that quite a few people use mobile phones but companies are more likely to invest in countries with excellent broadband connections; no one ever had thought of this before, right?
Sun Microsystems , as a result of the Oracle takeover, said it will allow 3,000 current workers never to bother coming to work again; Sun referred to the losses as "jobs," not people; now the fourth largest server maker in the world, Sun said it lost $2.2 billion in its last fiscal year; European regulators are holding up approval of the Oracle purchase in the hope of getting some money in exchange for not involving Oracle in court cases.
The multi-gazillionaire and very annoying investor Carl Icahn resigned from the board at Yahoo ; he spun it as a vote of confidence, saying current directors are taking the formerly threatened company seriously; Yahoo reported increased profits but smaller revenues in the third quarter.
The US House of Representatives voted to censure Vietnam for jailing bloggers; the non-binding resolution sponsored by southern California congresswoman Loretta Sanchez said the Internet is "a crucial tool for the citizens of Vietnam to be able to exercise their freedom of expression and association;"Hanoi has recently jailed at least nine activists for up to six years apiece for holding pro-democracy banners. Iran jailed blogger Hossein "Hoder" Derakshan for 10 months - in solitary confinement.
Kindle e-book reader maker Amazon.com and new Nook e-book reader vendor Barnes and Noble got it on; B&N got great reviews for the "Kindle killer"Nook, with dual screens and touch controls so you can "turn" pages, plays MP3s and allows many non-B&N book formats, although not the Kindle one;Amazon then killed the US version of its Kindle in favour of the international one, reduced its price to $260(8,700 baht), same as the Nook; it's not yet clear what you can get in Thailand with a Nook, but you sure can't (yet) get much, relatively speaking, with a Kindle;but here's the biggest difference so far,which Amazon.com has ignored: the Nook lets you lend e-books to any other Nook owner, just as if they were paper books; the borrowed books expire on the borrower's Nook in two weeks.
Phone maker Nokia of Finland announced it is suing iPhone maker Apple of America for being a copycat; lawyers said they figure Nokia can get at least one, probably two per cent (retail) for every iPhone sold by Steve "President for Life" Jobs and crew via the lawsuit,which sure beats working for it -$6 (200 baht) to $12(400 baht) on 30 million phones sold so far, works out to $400 million or 25 percent of the whole Apple empire profits during the last quarter;there were 10 patent thefts, the Finnish executives said, on everything from moving data to security and encryption.
Nokia of Finland announced that it is one month behind on shipping its new flagship N900 phone, the first to run on Linux software; delay of the $750(25,000 baht) phone had absolutely no part in making Nokia so short that it had to sue Apple, slap yourself for such a thought.
Tim Berners-Lee, who created the World Wide Web, said he had one regret:the double slash that follows the "http:"in standard web addresses; he estimated that 14.2 gazillion users have wasted 48.72 bazillion hours typing those two keystrokes, and he's sorry; of course there's no reason to ever type that, since your browser does it for you when you type "www.bangkokpost.com" but Tim needs to admit he made one error in his lifetime.
The International Telecommunication Union of the United Nations, which doesn't sell any phones or services, announced that there should be a mobile phone charger that will work with any phone; now who would ever have thought of that, without a UN body to wind up a major study on the subject?;the GSM Association estimates that 51,000 tonnes of chargers are made each year in order to keep companies able to have their own unique ones.
The Well, Doh Award of the Week was presented at arm's length to the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development; the group's deputy secretary-general Petko Draganov said that developing countries will miss some of the stuff available on the Internet if they don't install more broadband infrastructure; a report that used your tax baht to compile said that quite a few people use mobile phones but companies are more likely to invest in countries with excellent broadband connections; no one ever had thought of this before, right?
Sun Microsystems , as a result of the Oracle takeover, said it will allow 3,000 current workers never to bother coming to work again; Sun referred to the losses as "jobs," not people; now the fourth largest server maker in the world, Sun said it lost $2.2 billion in its last fiscal year; European regulators are holding up approval of the Oracle purchase in the hope of getting some money in exchange for not involving Oracle in court cases.
The multi-gazillionaire and very annoying investor Carl Icahn resigned from the board at Yahoo ; he spun it as a vote of confidence, saying current directors are taking the formerly threatened company seriously; Yahoo reported increased profits but smaller revenues in the third quarter.
The US House of Representatives voted to censure Vietnam for jailing bloggers; the non-binding resolution sponsored by southern California congresswoman Loretta Sanchez said the Internet is "a crucial tool for the citizens of Vietnam to be able to exercise their freedom of expression and association;"Hanoi has recently jailed at least nine activists for up to six years apiece for holding pro-democracy banners. Iran jailed blogger Hossein "Hoder" Derakshan for 10 months - in solitary confinement.
Wednesday, October 14, 2009
SOLAR HOMES COMPETE IN WASHINGTON
For the past week on the National Mall in Washington, international crews have been dusy putting up structures for an event showcasing a radiant source of energy that some once revered as a god.
The Solar Decathlon, a biennial event that began last Thursday, puts modular, solar-powered homes through 10 tests to determine which is the new sun king.
Over the course of a week, teams of students from Canada, Germany, Spain and the United States will take part in competitions judging the houses they designed and built for everything from aesthetics to engineering to whether the water heating system can meet a couple's hot water needs.
Judges will determine whether the houses are properly fitted out with the modern conveniences most Westerners cannot live without, and whether the appliances consume less energy than those in the average US home.
The houses displayed on the Mall, the sprawling grassy esplanade between the US Capitol and the Washington Monument, are restricted to a footprint of 800 square feet or 74.3 square metres and are supposed to target a specific market.
Scores of teams applied to compete in this year's decathlon, but only 20 were accepted, including Team Beausoleil from the University of Louisiana which built a house inspired by Cajun culture and facts of life in the southern US state, such as hurricanes. The 14-centimetre insulated walls can resist winds of 209 kilometres per hour, and the insulation would also "cut your energy rate by about half if the house's solar panels were not producing for the home," said Catherine Guidry, one of the sutdents working on the home.
The house featured a porch - almost a requirement in laid-back Louisiana - with moveable doors so it can be closed off on all sides or open on two sides. Plants indigenous to Louisiana thrived in planters in the small garden.
"We wanted it to feel like Louisiana from the inside and outside," Guidry said.
Team Germany, winner of the 2007 decathlon, has reconstructed a house whose exterior walls and louvered windows are covered with small integrated solar panels.
Like the Spanish team's abode, which features a large, raised moveable solar panel on the roof, the house was shipped across the Atlantic Ocean for the competition.
The entry from Cornell University students in New York state features three corrugated steel cylinders and walls insulated with five inches of soy-based foam and sy-lights in all three cylindrical rooms.
The house is visually striking and, according to Cornell architecture student Chris Werner, can hold its own in a new category in this year's decathlon - the "net metering" contest, which measures the energy a house produces for or takes from the electricity grid during the competition.
Even the heat that gets trapped in the structure's steel exterior is used to heat water, said Werner.
And when Cornell put its house through its paces at last month's New York state fair, it achieved "net-zero or better the entire time", meaning it is efficient enough to not require energy from the grid, according to Werner.
After two years of work on their houses plus nearly two weeks of constructing and competing, the winners will take home "bragging rights and lots of good feelings about the last two years of our lives", he said.
They will also take home a little culinary insight into the regions represented by other competitors because the "home entertainment" category of the decathlon requires teams to cook dinner for members of rival line-ups.
The German team's menu will feature dumplings known as knoedeln, but no sauerkraut, said Sardika Meyer, a spokeswoman for the team.
No German beer either - alcohol is banned at the competition.
The University of Arizona team, whose house is made up of four modules that look like glass-domed funicular railway cars, plans to treat guests to tamales - the Mexican answer to chapatis - filled with dried, sharedded beef known as "machaca" and a cactus salsa.
Team Beausoleil will serve up Louisiana specialities, including gumbo and bread pudding - but has ditched the idea of serving fried alligator.
"We thought it might scare away the neighbours," said Geoff Gjertson, the team's faculty advisor.
The Solar Decathlon, a biennial event that began last Thursday, puts modular, solar-powered homes through 10 tests to determine which is the new sun king.
Over the course of a week, teams of students from Canada, Germany, Spain and the United States will take part in competitions judging the houses they designed and built for everything from aesthetics to engineering to whether the water heating system can meet a couple's hot water needs.
Judges will determine whether the houses are properly fitted out with the modern conveniences most Westerners cannot live without, and whether the appliances consume less energy than those in the average US home.
The houses displayed on the Mall, the sprawling grassy esplanade between the US Capitol and the Washington Monument, are restricted to a footprint of 800 square feet or 74.3 square metres and are supposed to target a specific market.
Scores of teams applied to compete in this year's decathlon, but only 20 were accepted, including Team Beausoleil from the University of Louisiana which built a house inspired by Cajun culture and facts of life in the southern US state, such as hurricanes. The 14-centimetre insulated walls can resist winds of 209 kilometres per hour, and the insulation would also "cut your energy rate by about half if the house's solar panels were not producing for the home," said Catherine Guidry, one of the sutdents working on the home.
The house featured a porch - almost a requirement in laid-back Louisiana - with moveable doors so it can be closed off on all sides or open on two sides. Plants indigenous to Louisiana thrived in planters in the small garden.
"We wanted it to feel like Louisiana from the inside and outside," Guidry said.
Team Germany, winner of the 2007 decathlon, has reconstructed a house whose exterior walls and louvered windows are covered with small integrated solar panels.
Like the Spanish team's abode, which features a large, raised moveable solar panel on the roof, the house was shipped across the Atlantic Ocean for the competition.
The entry from Cornell University students in New York state features three corrugated steel cylinders and walls insulated with five inches of soy-based foam and sy-lights in all three cylindrical rooms.
The house is visually striking and, according to Cornell architecture student Chris Werner, can hold its own in a new category in this year's decathlon - the "net metering" contest, which measures the energy a house produces for or takes from the electricity grid during the competition.
Even the heat that gets trapped in the structure's steel exterior is used to heat water, said Werner.
And when Cornell put its house through its paces at last month's New York state fair, it achieved "net-zero or better the entire time", meaning it is efficient enough to not require energy from the grid, according to Werner.
After two years of work on their houses plus nearly two weeks of constructing and competing, the winners will take home "bragging rights and lots of good feelings about the last two years of our lives", he said.
They will also take home a little culinary insight into the regions represented by other competitors because the "home entertainment" category of the decathlon requires teams to cook dinner for members of rival line-ups.
The German team's menu will feature dumplings known as knoedeln, but no sauerkraut, said Sardika Meyer, a spokeswoman for the team.
No German beer either - alcohol is banned at the competition.
The University of Arizona team, whose house is made up of four modules that look like glass-domed funicular railway cars, plans to treat guests to tamales - the Mexican answer to chapatis - filled with dried, sharedded beef known as "machaca" and a cactus salsa.
Team Beausoleil will serve up Louisiana specialities, including gumbo and bread pudding - but has ditched the idea of serving fried alligator.
"We thought it might scare away the neighbours," said Geoff Gjertson, the team's faculty advisor.
Monday, October 12, 2009
"Alien" star promotes gorilla rescue project in DR Congo
Actress Sigourney Weaver said on Saturday that orphaned gorillas desperately need a permanent rescue and rehabilitation centre that's currently being built in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
The Gorilla Rehabilitation and Conservation Education Center (Grace) is set to open in March, about a year after construction began. It's a joint project of the Atlanta-based Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund and several other organisations.
Fossey, a Californian who was killed in 1985, made researching and rescuing the African gorilla population her life's mission. She lived among the rare mountain gorillas and observed their behaviour over roughly 10 years at Karisoke, a research camp she established in Rwanda.
Ms Weaver played Fossey in the 1988 movie Gorillas in the Mist and is honorary chair of the fund. While filming, Ms Weaver said she spent many days with gorillas.
"These little gorillas just steal your heart. They're very sensitive creatures,"she said."So it's no surprise that this is a very demanding and ambitious project,the Grace Center, but we need it."
Ms Weaver was at Atlanta's Woodruff Arts Center Saturday to talk about the project.Gorilla's in the Mist will be shown on a big screen for the first time in about 20 years at Woodruff on Oct 17 as part of fundraising efforts.
The centre will house orphaned gorillas who may have behavioural, develop mental, physical or psychological problems after being rescued from poachers.
Ms Weaver said the centre aims to care for and rehabilitate the gorillas to the point that they may be able to survive in the wild, instead of living out their lives in captivity.
The other organisations partnering with the gorilla fund in this project are the Pan African Sanctuary Alliance, Disney's Animal Kingdom, the Disney Wildlife Conservation Fund, the US Fish and Wildlife Service, and the national park authorities of the Democratic Republic of Congo and Rwanda.
The Gorilla Rehabilitation and Conservation Education Center (Grace) is set to open in March, about a year after construction began. It's a joint project of the Atlanta-based Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund and several other organisations.
Fossey, a Californian who was killed in 1985, made researching and rescuing the African gorilla population her life's mission. She lived among the rare mountain gorillas and observed their behaviour over roughly 10 years at Karisoke, a research camp she established in Rwanda.
Ms Weaver played Fossey in the 1988 movie Gorillas in the Mist and is honorary chair of the fund. While filming, Ms Weaver said she spent many days with gorillas.
"These little gorillas just steal your heart. They're very sensitive creatures,"she said."So it's no surprise that this is a very demanding and ambitious project,the Grace Center, but we need it."
Ms Weaver was at Atlanta's Woodruff Arts Center Saturday to talk about the project.Gorilla's in the Mist will be shown on a big screen for the first time in about 20 years at Woodruff on Oct 17 as part of fundraising efforts.
The centre will house orphaned gorillas who may have behavioural, develop mental, physical or psychological problems after being rescued from poachers.
Ms Weaver said the centre aims to care for and rehabilitate the gorillas to the point that they may be able to survive in the wild, instead of living out their lives in captivity.
The other organisations partnering with the gorilla fund in this project are the Pan African Sanctuary Alliance, Disney's Animal Kingdom, the Disney Wildlife Conservation Fund, the US Fish and Wildlife Service, and the national park authorities of the Democratic Republic of Congo and Rwanda.
Sunday, October 11, 2009
PRESERVING THREE NATURAL LEGACIES
Vichit Phanumphai, a traffic/highway engineer specialising in safety, wrote to ask my opinion concerning the 100-year-old trees in the Sanam Chandra Palace compound in Nakhon Pathom.of proper care," he wrote."According to the gardeners I talked to a few weeks ago,the trees are not allowed to be pruned.
"One large tree in particular near the dog sta
tue needs some urgent remedial care."
Sanam Chandra Palace is about one kilometre from Nakhon Pathom's majestic golden pagoda, the Phra Pathom Chedi.King Rama VI had the palace built so he could have a place to stay when he visited the pagoda and watch the combat practice of his elite Wild Tigers Corps, a paramilitary troop.
The palace comprises five buildings and a shrine for the Hindu god, Ganesh. In front of King Rama VI's Chaleemongkolasana residence, a tiny castle built in combined French and English styles, is a statue of the king's loyal dog, Yalae. Silpakorn University now uses part of the 136-hectare compound as its campus, but the palace grounds and its buildings, which have been turned into museums, are open to the public.
To have an idea of what Mr Vichit was talking about, my son drove me down to Nakhon Pathom, some 56km south of Bangkok, last Sunday. The Sanam Chandra Palace compound is shaded by many trees,mostly rain trees and mahoganies, several of which were planted when the palace was built 100 years ago. Many showed signs of proper pruning, but as I went deeper into the compound I saw huge, old trees that had been taken over by strangler figs, or had dead branches or trunks that needed urgent surgery work. One tree was still standing but already dead.
The palace compound has 35 gardeners,and four of them were pruning a mediumsize Lagerstroemia tree. When asked why the Lagerstroemia was being pruned while the old rain trees which needed proper attention seemed to be neglected, they said they were allowed to prune the young trees, but not the old ones.
"We are waiting for the go-ahead from our boss. He has already asked for permission from Bangkok, but so far hasn't received any reply," one of them answered."We dare not cut down even that dead tree without permission."
The tree that Mr Vichit was most con-cerned about is a huge rain tree, one of three that flank the Chaleemongkolasana residence. But it is not alone, as two, and possibly all three, need urgent remedial care.
Two of the trees have been eaten to the core by termites, which have built anthills inside the trees' cavities. A more concerned caretaker would not have allowed the trees to deteriorate this far, and when asked what they thought about it, the gardeners said they had no choice but to let the trees die.
Not many people in Thailand see the aesthetic if not the historical value of old trees. The palace grounds, and certainly the Chaleemongkolasana residence, would not be the same without the trees, which have provided them shade for more than 100 years.
The rain trees heralded a different era,when Thailand was still called Siam, and without the trees the old atmosphere of the palace grounds would be gone; it would be akin to an old palace museum showing modern things that do not have a historical meaning.
In fact, the trees are still holding out and need not die if they are given proper care and maintenance now. First, the termites must be eradicated. There are a number of do-it-yourself termite control products -termiticides, baits, aerosols,insecticides, dusts - but it might be better to seek the services of a termite control professional.
After the termites have been eradicated,scrub out the termite mound and dead wood from the trees' cavities before applying a fungicide such as copper sulphate on the wound. Fill up the hollow cavity with brick and mortar; it might be necessary to use a piece of chicken wire mesh to strengthen the structure. Fill up the mesh's holes with cement until the tree's cavity is fully covered and then apply paint, if desired, to make the cemented part blend with the colour of the bark.
The trunks of old trees sometimes have fissures where rainwater and old leaves collect until they rot, killing the surrounding wood and forming a hollow cavity. These should be treated the same way, whether they contain termites or not.
The work does not stop there. The trees must be monitored regularly to make sure the termites have not come back and invaded the roots instead.
Actually, termites feed on dead wood and for them to establish clay mounds in the cavities of trees means that the old trees at the palace compound have been neglected for a long time. To be fair, one of the trees beside the Chaleemongkolasana residence showed signs of surgery, but the mortar had been pushed out by the clay mound or anthill.
It's as if there had been a change of caretaker; one looked after the trees well,but after he left he was replaced by someone who couldn't care less, or who needed someone else's permission before he did anything, to the detriment of the trees.
"One large tree in particular near the dog sta
tue needs some urgent remedial care."
Sanam Chandra Palace is about one kilometre from Nakhon Pathom's majestic golden pagoda, the Phra Pathom Chedi.King Rama VI had the palace built so he could have a place to stay when he visited the pagoda and watch the combat practice of his elite Wild Tigers Corps, a paramilitary troop.
The palace comprises five buildings and a shrine for the Hindu god, Ganesh. In front of King Rama VI's Chaleemongkolasana residence, a tiny castle built in combined French and English styles, is a statue of the king's loyal dog, Yalae. Silpakorn University now uses part of the 136-hectare compound as its campus, but the palace grounds and its buildings, which have been turned into museums, are open to the public.
To have an idea of what Mr Vichit was talking about, my son drove me down to Nakhon Pathom, some 56km south of Bangkok, last Sunday. The Sanam Chandra Palace compound is shaded by many trees,mostly rain trees and mahoganies, several of which were planted when the palace was built 100 years ago. Many showed signs of proper pruning, but as I went deeper into the compound I saw huge, old trees that had been taken over by strangler figs, or had dead branches or trunks that needed urgent surgery work. One tree was still standing but already dead.
The palace compound has 35 gardeners,and four of them were pruning a mediumsize Lagerstroemia tree. When asked why the Lagerstroemia was being pruned while the old rain trees which needed proper attention seemed to be neglected, they said they were allowed to prune the young trees, but not the old ones.
"We are waiting for the go-ahead from our boss. He has already asked for permission from Bangkok, but so far hasn't received any reply," one of them answered."We dare not cut down even that dead tree without permission."
The tree that Mr Vichit was most con-cerned about is a huge rain tree, one of three that flank the Chaleemongkolasana residence. But it is not alone, as two, and possibly all three, need urgent remedial care.
Two of the trees have been eaten to the core by termites, which have built anthills inside the trees' cavities. A more concerned caretaker would not have allowed the trees to deteriorate this far, and when asked what they thought about it, the gardeners said they had no choice but to let the trees die.
Not many people in Thailand see the aesthetic if not the historical value of old trees. The palace grounds, and certainly the Chaleemongkolasana residence, would not be the same without the trees, which have provided them shade for more than 100 years.
The rain trees heralded a different era,when Thailand was still called Siam, and without the trees the old atmosphere of the palace grounds would be gone; it would be akin to an old palace museum showing modern things that do not have a historical meaning.
In fact, the trees are still holding out and need not die if they are given proper care and maintenance now. First, the termites must be eradicated. There are a number of do-it-yourself termite control products -termiticides, baits, aerosols,insecticides, dusts - but it might be better to seek the services of a termite control professional.
After the termites have been eradicated,scrub out the termite mound and dead wood from the trees' cavities before applying a fungicide such as copper sulphate on the wound. Fill up the hollow cavity with brick and mortar; it might be necessary to use a piece of chicken wire mesh to strengthen the structure. Fill up the mesh's holes with cement until the tree's cavity is fully covered and then apply paint, if desired, to make the cemented part blend with the colour of the bark.
The trunks of old trees sometimes have fissures where rainwater and old leaves collect until they rot, killing the surrounding wood and forming a hollow cavity. These should be treated the same way, whether they contain termites or not.
The work does not stop there. The trees must be monitored regularly to make sure the termites have not come back and invaded the roots instead.
Actually, termites feed on dead wood and for them to establish clay mounds in the cavities of trees means that the old trees at the palace compound have been neglected for a long time. To be fair, one of the trees beside the Chaleemongkolasana residence showed signs of surgery, but the mortar had been pushed out by the clay mound or anthill.
It's as if there had been a change of caretaker; one looked after the trees well,but after he left he was replaced by someone who couldn't care less, or who needed someone else's permission before he did anything, to the detriment of the trees.
Wednesday, September 23, 2009
Borlaug, who saved millions from hunger, dies
Scientist and Nobel Peace Prize winner Norman Borlaug rose from his childhood on an Iowa farm to develop a type of wheat that helped feed the world, fostering a movement that is credited with saving up to 1 billion people from starvation.
Borlaug, 95, died last week from complications of cancer at his Dallas home, said Kathleen Phillips, a spokesman for Texas A&M University where Borlaug was a distinguished professor.
"Norman E. Borlaug saved more lives than any man in human history," said Josette Sheeran, executive director of the UN World Food Programme."His heart was as big as his brilliant mind, but it was his passion and compassion that moved the world."
He was known as the father of the "green revolution", which transformed agriculture through high-yield crop varieties and other innovations,helping to more than double world food production between 1960 and 1990.Many experts credit the green revolution with averting global famine during the second half of the 20th century and saving perhaps 1 billion lives.
"He has probably done more and is known by fewer people than anybody that has done that much," said Dr Ed Runge, retired head of Texas A&M University's Department of Soil and Crop Sciences and a close friend who persuaded Borlaug teach at the school."He made the world a better place - a much better place."
Borlaug began the work that led to his Nobel in Mexico at the end of World War II. There he developed diseaseresistant varieties of wheat that produced much more grain than traditional strains.
He and others later took those varieties and similarly improved strains of rice and corn to Asia, the Middle East, South America and Africa. In Pakistan and India,two of the nations that benefited most from the new crop varieties, grain yields more than quadrupled.
His successes in the 1960s came just as experts warned that mass starvation was inevitable as the world's population boomed.
"More than any other single person of his age, he has helped to provide bread for a hungry world," Nobel Peace Prize committee chairman Aase Lionaes said in presenting the award to Borlaug in 1970."We have made this choice in the hope that providing bread will also give the world peace."
But Borlaug and the Green Revolution were also criticised in later decades for promoting practices that used fertiliser and pesticides, and focusing on a few high-yield crops that benefited large landowners.
Borlaug often said wheat was only a vehicle for his real interest, which was to improve people's lives.
"We must recognise the fact that adequate food is only the first requisite for life," he said in his Nobel acceptance speech."For a decent and humane life we must also provide an opportunity for good education, remunerative employment, comfortable housing, good clothing and effective and compassionate medical care."
Borlaug also pressed governments for farmer-friendly economic policies and improved infrastructure to make markets accessible. A 2006 book about Borlaug
is titled The Man Who Fed the World .Norman Ernest Borlaug was born March 25,1914, on a farm near Cresco, Iowa, and educated through the eighth grade in a one-room schoolhouse.
He left home during the Great Depression to study forestry at the University of Minnesota.While there he earned himself a place in the university's wrestling hall of fame and met his future wife, whom he married in 1937. Margaret Borlaug died in 2007 at the age of 95.
After a brief stint with the US Forest Service, Norman Borlaug returned to the University of Minnesota for a doctoral degree in plant pathology. He then worked as a microbiologist for DuPont, but soon left for a job with the Rockefeller Foundation. Between 1944 and 1960,Borlaug dedicated himself to increasing Mexico's wheat production.
In 1963, Borlaug was named head of the newly formed International Maize and Wheat Improvement Centre in Mexico, where he trained thousands of young scientists.
Borlaug retired as head of the centre in 1979 and turned to university teaching,first at Cornell University and then at Texas A&M, which presented him with an honorary doctorate in December 2007.
He remained active well into his nineties, campaigning for the use of biotechnology to fight hunger. He also helped found and served as president of the Sasakawa Africa Foundation, an organisation funded by Japanese billionaire Ryoichi Sasakawa to introduce the green revolution to sub-Saharan Africa.
In 1986, Borlaug established the Des Moines, Iowa-based World Food Prize,a $250,000 award given each year to a person whose work improves the world's food supply.
He received the Congressional Gold Medal, the highest civilian honour given by Congress, in 2007.
He is survived by daughter Jeanie Borlaug Laube and her husband Rex; son William Gibson Borlaug and his wife Barbie; five grandchildren and six greatgrandchildren.
Borlaug, 95, died last week from complications of cancer at his Dallas home, said Kathleen Phillips, a spokesman for Texas A&M University where Borlaug was a distinguished professor.
"Norman E. Borlaug saved more lives than any man in human history," said Josette Sheeran, executive director of the UN World Food Programme."His heart was as big as his brilliant mind, but it was his passion and compassion that moved the world."
He was known as the father of the "green revolution", which transformed agriculture through high-yield crop varieties and other innovations,helping to more than double world food production between 1960 and 1990.Many experts credit the green revolution with averting global famine during the second half of the 20th century and saving perhaps 1 billion lives.
"He has probably done more and is known by fewer people than anybody that has done that much," said Dr Ed Runge, retired head of Texas A&M University's Department of Soil and Crop Sciences and a close friend who persuaded Borlaug teach at the school."He made the world a better place - a much better place."
Borlaug began the work that led to his Nobel in Mexico at the end of World War II. There he developed diseaseresistant varieties of wheat that produced much more grain than traditional strains.
He and others later took those varieties and similarly improved strains of rice and corn to Asia, the Middle East, South America and Africa. In Pakistan and India,two of the nations that benefited most from the new crop varieties, grain yields more than quadrupled.
His successes in the 1960s came just as experts warned that mass starvation was inevitable as the world's population boomed.
"More than any other single person of his age, he has helped to provide bread for a hungry world," Nobel Peace Prize committee chairman Aase Lionaes said in presenting the award to Borlaug in 1970."We have made this choice in the hope that providing bread will also give the world peace."
But Borlaug and the Green Revolution were also criticised in later decades for promoting practices that used fertiliser and pesticides, and focusing on a few high-yield crops that benefited large landowners.
Borlaug often said wheat was only a vehicle for his real interest, which was to improve people's lives.
"We must recognise the fact that adequate food is only the first requisite for life," he said in his Nobel acceptance speech."For a decent and humane life we must also provide an opportunity for good education, remunerative employment, comfortable housing, good clothing and effective and compassionate medical care."
Borlaug also pressed governments for farmer-friendly economic policies and improved infrastructure to make markets accessible. A 2006 book about Borlaug
is titled The Man Who Fed the World .Norman Ernest Borlaug was born March 25,1914, on a farm near Cresco, Iowa, and educated through the eighth grade in a one-room schoolhouse.
He left home during the Great Depression to study forestry at the University of Minnesota.While there he earned himself a place in the university's wrestling hall of fame and met his future wife, whom he married in 1937. Margaret Borlaug died in 2007 at the age of 95.
After a brief stint with the US Forest Service, Norman Borlaug returned to the University of Minnesota for a doctoral degree in plant pathology. He then worked as a microbiologist for DuPont, but soon left for a job with the Rockefeller Foundation. Between 1944 and 1960,Borlaug dedicated himself to increasing Mexico's wheat production.
In 1963, Borlaug was named head of the newly formed International Maize and Wheat Improvement Centre in Mexico, where he trained thousands of young scientists.
Borlaug retired as head of the centre in 1979 and turned to university teaching,first at Cornell University and then at Texas A&M, which presented him with an honorary doctorate in December 2007.
He remained active well into his nineties, campaigning for the use of biotechnology to fight hunger. He also helped found and served as president of the Sasakawa Africa Foundation, an organisation funded by Japanese billionaire Ryoichi Sasakawa to introduce the green revolution to sub-Saharan Africa.
In 1986, Borlaug established the Des Moines, Iowa-based World Food Prize,a $250,000 award given each year to a person whose work improves the world's food supply.
He received the Congressional Gold Medal, the highest civilian honour given by Congress, in 2007.
He is survived by daughter Jeanie Borlaug Laube and her husband Rex; son William Gibson Borlaug and his wife Barbie; five grandchildren and six greatgrandchildren.
Wetlands once more
Project temporarily floods agricultural fields to restore declining shorebird habitat and boost crops
The request struck Dave Hedlin,a farmer in Washington's fertile Skagit Valley, as particularly odd - conservationists wanted him to voluntarily flood his fields.
Most of us have spent our entire lifetimes trying to keep water off the land,said Hedlin, whose farmlands are nestled among inlets, bays and estuaries in the shadow of the snow-capped Mount Baker Volcano.
But he decided to take part in a pilot project run by the Nature Conservancy,which temporarily floods agricultural fields to restore shorebird habitat.
The flooding would be part of his farms regular crop rotation, and in theory would pay for itself by filling the fields with natural fertiliser, drowning diseasecausing bacteria in soil and boosting crop yields.
In turn, the wetlands would again become a rest and refuelling station for migratory shorebirds between their Arctic breeding grounds and southern winter retreats.
Of the 53 shorebirds that breed in North America, more than half are at grave risk, according to the US Shorebird Conservation Plan, a programme run by a coalition of public and private organisations.
After three years, early results suggest that the project is working: fifteen shorebird species have returned to the restored wetlands.
So far, three participating farmers have been happy with the experiment,including Hedlin, who said that he has not suffered financially.
Before the valley was converted to agriculture at the beginning of the 20th century, its wetlands had teemed with crustaceans, fish and bugs.
But since the wetlands became farmlands, most of the 50,000-some birds that visit each year feed in the nearby estuaries instead.
"We've totally changed this landscape," said Julie Morse, an ecologist with the Nature Conservancy in Mount Vernon, also in the Skagit Valley.
"It used to be tidally influenced, but now it is very much a dyked system."
The Skagit Valley project is modelled after a 10-year-old walking wetlands concept in the Klamath Basin of southern Oregon and northern California, where farmland within a wildlife refuge is placed on a wetland rotation.
Laura Payne, a wildlife ecologist based at the University of Washington in Seattle,called the project an innovative collaboration between farmers and conservationists.
"This idea has the potential for wide application, and I think it is absolutely relevant," Payne said.
If the project is successful, the Nature Conservancy plans to replicate the walking wetlands concept on farms throughout migratory-shorebird flyways, which extend from the Arctic to Central and South America.
"Loss of wetlands in coastal areas for farming has happened all around the world, so it could be implemented anywhere," the Nature Conservancy's Morse said.
The three Skagit Valley farmers,including Hedlin, who signed up to participate in the project have also helped shape it.
"They asked for advice first off, instead of telling us what they wanted to do,"Hedlin said.
The team hatched a plan to flood select fields with a thin sheet of water no more than 4in.(10cm) deep - an ideal level for shorebirds for three years.The plots stayed flooded for the entire experiment.
Doing so required the farmers to build berms to prevent water from flooding their neighbours land.
Preliminary results of the first three years suggest a partial success.
In the first year,15 species of shorebirds used the flooded fields, and only two shorebird species used the grazed and green-chop fields pointing to a possible ecological benefit of the flooded parcels.
"The Nature Conservancy team has no data on how many shorebird species historically visited the wetlands, and only about three species had been spotted after the conversion to agriculture. So the team was pleased to see 15 species return," Morse said.
But by the second year, cat's tail in the flooded fields were more than 15 feet (5m) tall, which proved too difficult for the shorebirds to navigate. That year only eight shorebird species visited the fields.
"It is pretty amazing that you let nature go and it [returns to a native state] that quickly," the Nature Conservancy's Morse said.
The conservationists are now considering plans to actively manage the flooded fields to keep them primed for shorebirds.
Farmers also saw a financial benefit:Nitrogen levels in the flooded fields increased on average by 50 pounds (23kg)per acre (0.4 hectare), which means that farmers may have spent less money on fertiliser.
Hedlin, the farmer, said he used the three-year flood to transition his field to organic, as fields have to sit fallow for three years for organic certification.
"We had a positive experience and didn't go backward financially," Hedlin said. The Nature Conservancy's Morse is now comparing how much money is gained on a grazed field versus a green chop field versus a flooded field.
"The big thing that we are doing that they haven't done in the Klamath is really trying to quantify how much value it provides to the farmers and how much [shorebird] habitat it provides," Morse said.
"And were comparing the ecological benefits of those three habitats as well,"she added.
Mark Colwell, a wildlife biologist at Humboldt State University in Arcata,California, praised the projects innovation.
"But helping migratory shorebirds bounce back is not easy," Colwell said.
Habitats such as the Skagit Valley and the Klamath Basin can be thought of as links in a chain along the migratoryshorebird flyway.
You can do stuff at a series of links in the chain up and down the flyway, but if at one site there's a serious problem there, well, the whole population could plummet.
Nevertheless, Colwell added, enough of these projects spread out along the flyway could help birds find enough food over the courses of their annual migrations.
The University of Washington's Payne noted that migratory shorebirds are opportunistic, particularly along inland flyways where wetland conditions are unpredictable.
"They know a good habitat when they see one, such as a normally dry area that floods in a particularly wet year,"Payne said.
Alternative habitats such as temporarily flooded fields, she said, suits this group of species.
The request struck Dave Hedlin,a farmer in Washington's fertile Skagit Valley, as particularly odd - conservationists wanted him to voluntarily flood his fields.
Most of us have spent our entire lifetimes trying to keep water off the land,said Hedlin, whose farmlands are nestled among inlets, bays and estuaries in the shadow of the snow-capped Mount Baker Volcano.
But he decided to take part in a pilot project run by the Nature Conservancy,which temporarily floods agricultural fields to restore shorebird habitat.
The flooding would be part of his farms regular crop rotation, and in theory would pay for itself by filling the fields with natural fertiliser, drowning diseasecausing bacteria in soil and boosting crop yields.
In turn, the wetlands would again become a rest and refuelling station for migratory shorebirds between their Arctic breeding grounds and southern winter retreats.
Of the 53 shorebirds that breed in North America, more than half are at grave risk, according to the US Shorebird Conservation Plan, a programme run by a coalition of public and private organisations.
After three years, early results suggest that the project is working: fifteen shorebird species have returned to the restored wetlands.
So far, three participating farmers have been happy with the experiment,including Hedlin, who said that he has not suffered financially.
Before the valley was converted to agriculture at the beginning of the 20th century, its wetlands had teemed with crustaceans, fish and bugs.
But since the wetlands became farmlands, most of the 50,000-some birds that visit each year feed in the nearby estuaries instead.
"We've totally changed this landscape," said Julie Morse, an ecologist with the Nature Conservancy in Mount Vernon, also in the Skagit Valley.
"It used to be tidally influenced, but now it is very much a dyked system."
The Skagit Valley project is modelled after a 10-year-old walking wetlands concept in the Klamath Basin of southern Oregon and northern California, where farmland within a wildlife refuge is placed on a wetland rotation.
Laura Payne, a wildlife ecologist based at the University of Washington in Seattle,called the project an innovative collaboration between farmers and conservationists.
"This idea has the potential for wide application, and I think it is absolutely relevant," Payne said.
If the project is successful, the Nature Conservancy plans to replicate the walking wetlands concept on farms throughout migratory-shorebird flyways, which extend from the Arctic to Central and South America.
"Loss of wetlands in coastal areas for farming has happened all around the world, so it could be implemented anywhere," the Nature Conservancy's Morse said.
The three Skagit Valley farmers,including Hedlin, who signed up to participate in the project have also helped shape it.
"They asked for advice first off, instead of telling us what they wanted to do,"Hedlin said.
The team hatched a plan to flood select fields with a thin sheet of water no more than 4in.(10cm) deep - an ideal level for shorebirds for three years.The plots stayed flooded for the entire experiment.
Doing so required the farmers to build berms to prevent water from flooding their neighbours land.
Preliminary results of the first three years suggest a partial success.
In the first year,15 species of shorebirds used the flooded fields, and only two shorebird species used the grazed and green-chop fields pointing to a possible ecological benefit of the flooded parcels.
"The Nature Conservancy team has no data on how many shorebird species historically visited the wetlands, and only about three species had been spotted after the conversion to agriculture. So the team was pleased to see 15 species return," Morse said.
But by the second year, cat's tail in the flooded fields were more than 15 feet (5m) tall, which proved too difficult for the shorebirds to navigate. That year only eight shorebird species visited the fields.
"It is pretty amazing that you let nature go and it [returns to a native state] that quickly," the Nature Conservancy's Morse said.
The conservationists are now considering plans to actively manage the flooded fields to keep them primed for shorebirds.
Farmers also saw a financial benefit:Nitrogen levels in the flooded fields increased on average by 50 pounds (23kg)per acre (0.4 hectare), which means that farmers may have spent less money on fertiliser.
Hedlin, the farmer, said he used the three-year flood to transition his field to organic, as fields have to sit fallow for three years for organic certification.
"We had a positive experience and didn't go backward financially," Hedlin said. The Nature Conservancy's Morse is now comparing how much money is gained on a grazed field versus a green chop field versus a flooded field.
"The big thing that we are doing that they haven't done in the Klamath is really trying to quantify how much value it provides to the farmers and how much [shorebird] habitat it provides," Morse said.
"And were comparing the ecological benefits of those three habitats as well,"she added.
Mark Colwell, a wildlife biologist at Humboldt State University in Arcata,California, praised the projects innovation.
"But helping migratory shorebirds bounce back is not easy," Colwell said.
Habitats such as the Skagit Valley and the Klamath Basin can be thought of as links in a chain along the migratoryshorebird flyway.
You can do stuff at a series of links in the chain up and down the flyway, but if at one site there's a serious problem there, well, the whole population could plummet.
Nevertheless, Colwell added, enough of these projects spread out along the flyway could help birds find enough food over the courses of their annual migrations.
The University of Washington's Payne noted that migratory shorebirds are opportunistic, particularly along inland flyways where wetland conditions are unpredictable.
"They know a good habitat when they see one, such as a normally dry area that floods in a particularly wet year,"Payne said.
Alternative habitats such as temporarily flooded fields, she said, suits this group of species.
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