The aquarium team at the Burj Al Arab hotel in Dubai have successfully bred zebra sharks from a female shark but amazingly, without a male. All the details are in the article published in the Journal of Fish Biology but overall this means that the captive female produced 15 pups from eggs laid within the aquarium [...]
I found this beautifully made bench which really is a piece of art, and wanted to share. After also finding the Sauce bench project in the same week (which was launched a while back) it makes me crave being able to sit down in public, in the shade of trees and watch the world go [...]
Environmentalists can be pretty scary – not just with their cardigans and jars of boiled fruits but with their poignant observations of the state of the planet, the doom and gloom and what not. It’s enough to turn anyone off. I came across this link though a TED talk by Adam Ostrow on the future of [...]
Green roofs not only look good but they help insulate buildings, reducing heating and cooling costs. And by green roofs I am not talking about potted plants sitting on the roof, I’m talking planted seeds in soil beds. In the UAE rooftop gardens are literally just beginning to bloom: a school and few test villas [...]
I love this bike rack. Thanks to its funky design you could put it anywhere and watch it give the place or neighbourhood an instant boost. If people have a safe place to leave their bicycles, they will start using them and leaving the car at home. Asides from the eco factor, it just makes [...]
Coffee drinkers who like a frothy head on their morning caffeine fix could soon be able to order a “camel-ccino” or cappuccino with camel’s milk. Coffee and camels — two icons of Arab heritage — have been brought together not only to create a hot beverage, but to help the country achieve food security. The [...]
Antarctica, the last ‘great wilderness on earth’, has changed those that get the opportunity to go there. Taryam Al Subaihi, old friend, ex-colleague, and Emirati based in Abu Dhabi was chosen by his company to go on Robert Swan’s Inspire Antarctic Expedition 2011 last month to study climate change, making me, and everybody around him incredibly [...]
As I don’t have a car, TV, DVD player, radio or CD player I rely entirely on my laptop, iPhone and iTunes- which is great. But I’ve noticed that while I have a huge access to media, it’s all derived one way or another from my conscious search for it, be it news, music or films. Rarely do [...]
Can light bulbs be sexy? Lighting can definitely set the mood but it’s rare to say the same of an energy efficient bulb. And yet I believe this new and recent winner of a bulb has upped the stakes. With Earth Hour around the corner and calls for going ‘beyond the hour’, you can’t go [...]
I made it down to Masdar Institute of Science and Technology a few weeks ago and experienced the driverless, pod-type ‘cars’ that are moving people from the car park to the institute. The cars are minimalist with either leather or canvas interiors and overall gave me the impression of sitting in a child’s toy – [...]
Illegal trade in wildlife products like ivory and rhino horn must be treated as a serious crime in order to end the devastating poaching of protected species, the head of UN wildlife trade regulator CITES said last week. “This is serious crime, and you need serious resources and serious penalties” to address it, said CITES [...]
South African authorities have been rounding up thousands of escaped crocodiles since Friday after floods gave them an escape route from a crocodile farm. Authorities attempted to reassure the public everything was under control. “A large number” of 15,000 reptiles at the Rakwena Crocodile Farm in the far north of the country had escaped last Sunday [...]
Brazil will undertake the massive task of cataloging the trees of the Amazon, in an effort to better monitor and protect the world’s largest tropical forest, the environment ministry announced Friday. The planned tree census, set to take four years, “will allow us to have a broad panorama of the quality and the conditions in [...]
Recycling entrepreneur Tom Szaky is stubbing out the world’s cigarette problem — one butt at a time. The 30-year-old who dropped out of Princeton University to start his innovative company TerraCycle in Trenton, New Jersey, says there’s no such thing as trash, even when you’re talking about the contents of ashtrays. In a program started [...]
