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§ December 31st, 2011 § Filed under hail § Tagged water § No Comments
JAKARTA, Indonesia ? Rescuers battled high waves Sunday as they searched for 200 asylum seekers missing and feared dead after their overcrowded ship sank off Indonesia’s main island of Java. So far only 33 people have been plucked alive from the choppy waters.
Two were children, aged 8 and 10, found clinging to the broken debris of the boat five hours after the accident Saturday.
“It’s really a miracle they made it,” said Kelik Enggar Purwanto, a member of the search and rescue team, as horrifying accounts emerged of the disaster.
Nearly 250 people fleeing economic and political hardship in Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran and Turkey were trying to reach Australia in search of a better life when they ran into a powerful storm 20 miles (32 kilometers) off Java’s southern coast on Saturday.
After being slammed by a 15-foot- (3-meter-) high wave, the fiberglass ship ? carrying more than twice its capacity ? broke apart, survivors said, disappearing tail first into the dark waters.
Soon after, 25-year-old local fisherman, Jambe, spotted several dark dots from his own tiny wooden fishing vessel and decided to investigate.
He and his three-member crew were horrified at what they found: more than 100 hysterical and exhausted people clinging to anything that floated.
Survivors immediately started racing toward them.
“They were all fighting, scrambling to get into my boat,” Jambe told The Associated Press, adding there was only room for 10.
In the end he managed to get 25 on board, many of them injured and all begging for water to drink.
Those left behind were screaming and crying.
“I’m so sad … I feel so guilty, but there were just too many of them,” said Jambe, who like many Indonesians uses only one name. “I was worried if we took any more we’d sink, too.”
Indonesia, a sprawling nation of 240 million people, has more than 18,000 islands and thousands of miles (kilometers) of unpatrolled coastline, making it a key transit point for smuggling migrants.
Many risk a dangerous journey on rickety boats in hopes of getting to Australia, where they face years in crowded, prison-like detention facilities. Australia’s harsh immigration policy has loosened up in recent months, however.
Those on the ship that sank Saturday had passed through Indonesia’s capital, Jakarta, days earlier without any legal immigration documents, according to police.
An unidentified group loaded them onto four buses and took them to a port, promising to get them to Australia’s tiny Christmas Island.
Local television showed a half-dozen survivors at a shelter in Trenggalek, the Javanese town closest to the scene of the sinking, some with dazed, empty expressions as they sat on the floor drinking and eating.
Several others were taken to a nearby hospital in critical condition.
Khadzim Huzen, a 30-year-old Afghani, told the AP that after the big wave hit, the ship started tipping into the water, and everyone rushed to the front.
A fight broke out for life jackets.
There were only 25, he said, and nine already had been taken by the crew.
“In the end, as everything was being swallowed up by the water, we just grabbed hold of anything we could,” he said. “We formed small groups in the water and tried to help each other stay afloat.”
At Prigi, the nearest port, several members of the national search and rescue team were getting ready to head out to sea, empty body bags stacked up on the deck, local television footage showed.
Lt. Alwi Mudzakir, a maritime police officer, said so far 33 people have been rescued, many suffering from severe dehydration and exhaustion.
He was worried ? as the hours passed ? that no one else would be found alive.
Weather was bad Sunday and four fishing boats, two helicopters and a navy ship already involved in the operation were battling 4-meter- (13-foot-) high waves.
“They have scoured a 50-mile (80-kilometer) radius but haven’t found anything,” Mudzakir said, adding that currents were very strong.
Last month, a ship carrying about 70 asylum seekers from Afghanistan, Iran and Pakistan capsized off the southern coast of Central Java province, and at least eight people died.
___
Associated Press writer Niniek Karmini contributed to this report.
Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/topstories/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20111218/ap_on_re_as/as_indonesia_ship_sinks
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ScienceDaily (Dec. 19, 2011) ? Photosynthesis is considered the “Holy Grail” in the field of sustainable energy generation because it directly converts solar energy into storable fuel using nothing but water and carbon dioxide (CO2). Scientists have long tried to mimic the underlying natural processes and to optimize them for energy device applications such as photo-electrochemical cells (PEC), which use sunlight to electrochemically split water — and thus directly generate hydrogen, cutting short the more conventional approach using photovoltaic cells for the electrolysis of water.
Traditionally, PEC electrodes are made of semiconducting materials such as metal oxides, some of which are also known for their photocatalytic properties. For quite some time, researchers at Empa’s Laboratory for High Performance Ceramics (LHPC) have been investigating nanoparticles of these materials, for instance titanium dioxide (TiO2), for the neutralization of organic pollutants in air and water. Collaborating with colleagues at the University of Basel and at Argonne National Laboratory in the US, they now succeeded in making a nano-bio PEC electrode, consisting of iron oxide conjugated with a protein from blue-green algae (also known as cyanobacteria), which is twice as efficient in water splitting as iron oxide alone.
Inspired by photosynthesis
Iron oxide, in particular hematite (a-Fe2O3), is a promising electrode material for PEC because it is susceptible to visible wavelengths and thus uses sunlight more efficiently than photocatalysts like TiO2, which can only use the UV part of solar radiation. What’s more, hematite is a low-cost and abundant material.
The second ingredient in the novel electrode “recipe” is phycocyanin, a protein from blue-green algae. “I was inspired by the natural photosynthetic machinery of cyanobacteria where phycocyanin acts as a major light-harvesting component. I wanted to make artificial photosynthesis using ceramics and proteins,” recalls Debajeet K. Bora who designed the new electrode during his PhD thesis at Empa. “The concept of hematite surface functionalization with proteins was completely novel in PEC research.”
After Bora covalently cross-coupled phycocyanin to hematite nanoparticles that had been immobilized as a thin film, the conjugated hematite absorbed many more photons than without the algal protein. In fact, the induced photocurrent of the hybrid electrode was doubled compared to a “normal” iron oxide electrode.
One tough cookie
Somewhat surprisingly, the light harvesting protein complex does not get destroyed while in contact with a photocatalyst in an alkaline environment under strong illumination. Chemists would have predicted the complete denaturation of biomolecules under such corrosive and aggressive conditions. “Photocatalysts are designed to destroy organic pollutants, which are a burden to the environment. But here we have a different situation,” says Artur Braun, group leader at Empa’s LHPC and principal investigator of the study. “There seems to be a delicate balance where organic molecules not only survive harsh photocatalytic conditions, but even convey an additional benefit to ceramic photocatalysts: They double the photocurrent. This is a big step forward.”
The project was fully funded by the Swiss Federal Office of Energy (SFOE). Bora who will soon have completed his PhD thesis says he will continue what he started at Empa during a postdoc at the University of California, Berkeley, which he will assume early next year.
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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Empa.
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Journal Reference:
- Debajeet K. Bora, Elena A. Rozhkova, Krisztina Schrantz, Pradeep P. Wyss, Artur Braun, Thomas Graule, Edwin C. Constable. Functionalization of Nanostructured Hematite Thin-Film Electrodes with the Light-Harvesting Membrane Protein C-Phycocyanin Yields an Enhanced Photocurrent. Advanced Functional Materials, 2011; DOI: 10.1002/adfm.201101830
Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.
Disclaimer: Views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.
Source: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/12/111219112010.htm
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WELLINGTON, New Zealand ? Crops are wilting, schools have shut their bathrooms and government officials are bathing in lagoons because of a severe shortage of fresh water in a swath of the South Pacific.
The island groups of Tuvalu and Tokelau have declared emergencies, relying on bottled water and seeking more desalination machines. Parts of Samoa are starting to ration water.
Supplies are precariously low after a severe lack of rain in a region where underground reserves have been fouled by saltwater from rising seas that scientists have linked to climate change.
While nobody has gone thirsty yet, officials worry about the logistics of supplying everyone with enough water to survive and the potential health problems that might arise. And exactly how the islands will cope in the long term remains a question mark.
“We are praying that things will change,” Samoan-based official Jovilisi Suveinakama said.
Six months of low rainfall have dried out the islands. Climate scientists say it’s part of a cyclical Pacific weather pattern known as La Nina ? and they predict the coming months will bring no relief, with the pattern expected to continue.
Rising sea levels are exacerbating the problem, as salt water seeps into underground supplies of fresh water that are drawn to the surface through wells.
On the three main atolls that make up isolated Tokelau, the 1,400 residents ran out of fresh water altogether last week and are relying on a seven-day supply of bottled water that was sent Saturday from Samoa, Suveinakama said.
Suveinakama said that some schools no longer have drinking water available, and that the students often need to return home if they want to use a bathroom.
“In terms of domestic chores, like washing clothes, everything’s been put on hold,” he said. “We are cautious of the situation given the possible health issues.”
Suveinakama said that Tokelau, a territory of New Zealand, has tapped emergency funds to buy desalination machines, which turn salt water into fresh water. He hopes those will be shipped to the islands soon.
In Tuvalu, a nation of low lying atolls that is home to less than 11,000 people, Red Cross team leader Dean Manderson described the situation as “quite dire.”
He said that on the island of Nukulaelae, there were only 16 gallons of fresh water remaining Tuesday for the 350 residents and that the Red Cross was sending over two small desalination machines.
He said much of the well water on Tuvalu is unusable because it has become contaminated with salt water.
The New Zealand government this week flew a defense force C-130 plane to Tuvalu stocked with Red Cross supplies of bottled water and desalination machines. Officials including High Commissioner Gareth Smith also flew over to assess the situation.
Smith said the coconut trees on Tuvalu are looking sickly and that the edible breadfruit, which grow in trees, are much smaller than usual. He said other local fruits and vegetables, including a type of giant taro, are not growing well or are in short supply.
He said people in the capital of Funafuti are permitted a ration of two buckets of water per day and that government ministers have been bathing in the lagoon to preserve water.
Funafuti residents have been relying on a large desalination machine for much of their daily water supply, said Manderson. The Red Cross has been helping improve the function of that machine and has been fixing other such machines that have broken down, he added.
New Zealand climate scientist James Renwick said the rainfall problems can be traced back 12 months, when the region began experiencing one of the strongest La Nina systems on record.
La Nina is sparked when larger-than-normal differences in water temperature across the Pacific Ocean cause the east-blowing trade winds to increase in strength, Renwick said. That, in turn, pushes rainfall to the west, leaving places like Tuvalu and Tokelau dry.
Last year’s La Nina system dwindled by June but has begun picking up again just ahead of the November rainy season, Renwick said, meaning that there is no relief in sight for island groups like Tuvalu, Tokelau and Samoa.
“Low rainfall continues to be on the cards, at least through the end of the year,” Renwick said.
Officials say they are concentrating on the short-term supply problems and have not yet had time to think about longer term solutions for the islands. But they say that the combination of rising water levels and low rainfall mean makes life on the islands look increasingly precarious.
Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/environment/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20111004/ap_on_re_as/as_south_pacific_water_shortage
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