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0 commentsOne of the great ironies of investor-owned utilities in the era of climate change is that the incentives are entirely backward: utilities earn money by selling electricity. The more they sell, the more they earn. This has the unfortunate consequence of increasing the emission of greenhouse gases and other pollutants such as mercury and sulfur dioxide. And because utilities are required by law to maximize profits for their shareholders, it isn't surprising that they have dragged their feet for decades on the issue of reducing emissions from power plants.
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0 commentsIt used to be that the greatest obstacle to doing research, be it scientific, literary, or any other kind, for that matter, was actually acquiring the requisite data. Many public libraries were underfunded, or closed when the data was needed, or otherwise inaccessible to those that sought the information contained within their walls. Academic research was-and often still is-published in exclusive academic journals, whose high cost prevented the wider dissemination of the research. The list of barriers is nearly endless.
A New Paradigm Now, with the tremendous proliferation of low-cost bandwidth and cheap data storage and computing power, many of those barriers have come down. Any time, day or night, anyone in the world can access much of the knowledge previously stored in libraries in journals, simply by doing a Google search. Even scholarly magazines are beginning to offer their findings in an "open-source format" online. Harvard has its Open-Collections Program, which provides "online access to historical resources from Harvard's renowned libraries, archives, and museums," and MIT offers Open Courseware, which enables anyone with a computer and internet access to 'take' a course at MIT. The list goes on, but this time it is a far more extensive list, one that comprises millions of blogs and wikis, corporate web sites, universities, encyclopedias, dictionaries, medical web sites, and so on.Click here to download a PDF of my complete thesis. Questions and comments are much appreciated!
My masters thesis in Environmental Studies at Brown University looks at how microfinance--the provision of small…
Micro-credit has undoubtedly been a runaway success in developing countries as a tool of both poverty alleviation and economic development. To date, some 100 million people have been reached by micro-loans, and Muhammad Yunus, the founder of the Grameen Bank…
It is late and my mind should be drifting through the colorful abyss of deep sleep, yet instead i find that tonight sleep will not come. I am like a hungry flower who dreams of bees so ardently that all…