By Barbara Jacquelyn Sahakian, Christelle Langley and Jianfeng Feng | – There’s no doubt that 2020 was difficult for everyone and tragic for many. But now vaccines against COVID-19 are finally being administered – giving a much needed hope of a return to normality and a happy 2021. However, months of anxiety, grief and loneliness […]
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Archives for 2021
German Researchers develop battery pack for electric cars that is 40% Lighter
By Julian Wettengel | – ( Clean Energy Wire) – Scientists at the Fraunhofer Institute for Structural Durability and System Reliability (LBF) have developed a lightweight battery pack to reduce the overall weight of e-car batteries. The new pack holding the battery cells is made of fibre-plastic composites, reducing the weight by 40 percent compared […]
Thanks to our Generous and Wonderful Readers
Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – We’re pretty sure that when all is said and done, we made our fundraising goal again this year. We can’t thank our generous and wonderful readers enough. This is what it truly means to be a reader-supported site. Those of you who are expecting copies of The Rubaiyat of Omar […]
New Year Bliss in Persian Poetry: the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam
Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – After the dark year of 2020, I thought it might be nice to talk about poetry and rebirth today. The quatrains or Rubaiyat attributed to the medieval astronomer Omar Khayyam (d. 1131), four-line Persian poems, are often about renewal, and some make special mention of New Year’s Day (Now-Ruz in […]
In Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Palestinian territories: Refugee camps contain the hidden victims of Covid-19
( Middle East Monitor) – With the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic in late 2019, interest in the plight of the world’s most vulnerable populations, refugees, began to wane. A year later, and it is as if the refugee crisis has disappeared completely. It hasn’t, though. In fact, the world’s erstwhile leading humanitarian crisis has […]
5 years after the Paris Accord: How countries’ climate policies match up to their promises, and who’s aiming for net zero emissions
By Morgan Bazilian and Dolf Gielen | – December marked the fifth anniversary of the Paris climate agreement – the commitment by almost every country to try to keep global warming well below 2 degrees Celsius. It’s an ambitious goal, and the clock is ticking. The planet has already warmed by about 1 C [1.8 […]
As pandemic surges, health officials call COVID-19 fatigue real and dangerous
By Joycelyn Cabrera | – ( Cronkite News ) – WASHINGTON – The numbers can be numbing. And that’s exactly what health officials fear. More than a half-million Arizonans have contracted COVID-19 and more than 8,700 have died from it so far, according to state data. The disease is surging again, with one week this […]