[2-20]Our World - 20 February 2010

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This week on Our World: Going for the green at the winter Olympics ... a promising new approach to making solar cells ... and cheap laptop computers for all the world's children.

NEGROPONTE:  "1.2 million children in 31 countries 19 languages; and one country, Uruguay, has just completed doing every single child in the country."   

One Laptop Per Child, the controversial use of chimpanzees for medical research, and more.

I'm Art Chimes. Welcome to VOA's science and technology magazine, "Our World."



Vancouver Strives for Green Olympics

Millions of people around the world are following the thrilling competition at the Winter Olympics in Vancouver this week. But you might not know that officials organizing the games made a special effort to reduce the environmental footprint of the event. Of course, their efforts were undercut when unseasonably warm temperatures forced them to use aircraft to bring in snow. But as VOA's Rosanne Skirble reports, they're still trying to make this the greenest Olympics yet.

TEXT:    Vancouver's plan to green the Olympics started even before the city won the bid to host the 2010 Winter Games, says Ann Duffy. She directs the corporate sustainability program for Vancouver's Olympic Organizing Committee.

DUFFY:  "In early in 2000 to 2003 we like to say we had over 1,000 conversations with environmental organizations across Canada as well as first-nation communities whose territories the Games would occur on, business, the industry sector as well as the our host communities of Whistler and Vancouver."  

SKIRBLE:  Duffy notes that every venue was built according to Canada's current nationwide green building standards. The Olympic venues make smart use of glass and windows, capture rain water from roofs to irrigate landscaping, and reduce water usage with low-flow toilets. And Duffy says the organizing committee called for an innovative district-wide energy system.  

DUFFY:  "And that's using waste heat from the sewer lines. In Whistler, it's using waste heat from the waste water treatment plant."

SKIRBLE:  Duffy says the city's Olympic organizers are also committed to offset some 118,000 tons of CO2 emissions through a series of projects that employ clean-energy technologies.  

DUFFY:  "About 50 percent of our offsets are in Canada, and we had a particular interest in investing in technologies that showcase where the low-carbon economy is going. But we also have gold-standard projects that international NGOs [non-governmental organizations] and companies will recognize."    

SKIRBLE:  The 118,000-ton CO2 offset is substantial, but represents only half of the Games-related emissions, according to Paul Lingl. He's with the non-profit Suzuki Foundation, and is co-author of a 2008 report on green games requested by Vancouver organizers. Even before the February 12 opening ceremonies, the foundation issued its Olympic climate scorecard.

LINGL:  "Overall we felt that the Vancouver Olympics earned a bronze medal for their climate performance."

SKIRBLE:  The scorecard applauds Vancouver for green design, clean energy, and emissions measurements and reductions. But Lingl says while a fleet of fuel-efficient vehicles and hydrogen fuel cell buses are in town for the Games, the city failed to provide the region with any long-term transportation solutions.

LINGL:  "And, in fact, for the Vancouver Olympics, $600 million were spent to widen the highway, and we felt that [there] could have been more sustainable transportation options that could have been built for the Games."

SKIRBLE:  Lingl adds that if the Olympic movement is serious about reducing the Games' negative impact on the global climate, it may have to rethink its approach to running the games.

LINGL:  "And, it just does not make sense, every two years, to have a new Olympics somewhere in a new city that has to build all these brand-new venues over and over again."    

SKIRBLE:  He also urges the IOC to require all future host cities to follow climate-friendly standards.

LINGL:  "For countries that cannot afford some of these initiatives we do think that there is a role for the IOC to maybe fund some of these initiatives, for example, with media revenues to help some of these other countries to implement some of these green infrastructure projects."

SKIRBLE:  Ann Duffy, with Vancouver's Olympic organizing committee, wouldn't predict whether the IOC will make green design mandatory for all future Olympics. But one legacy from Vancouver 2010, she says, is a Sustainable Sport and Event Toolkit. That's a how-to guide to help host-cities plan games that have minimum impact on the environment, but that are also ethical, inclusive, financially successful and, of course, exciting.  

Rosanne Skirble, VOA News, Washington.



Study Indicates Healthiest Americans Live in Urban, Suburban Areas

Americans live longer and healthier in places where smoking rates are lower, where fewer people are obese, and where there are plenty of places to buy fresh fruits and vegetables but few places to buy liquor.

Those are some of the take-away messages from a new study that looked at the health of people in each of America's 3,000 counties and compared it with factors that might contribute to good health or bad health.

The County Health Rankings study is a joint project of the University of Wisconsin and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The foundation's president, Risa Lavizzo-Mourey, says the findings paint a clear picture of what factors contribute to good health, and which do not.

LAVIZZO-MOUREY:  "In other words, where we live, learn, work, and play really matters to our health. It matters a lot."

One thing I found interesting: the healthiest counties tend to be urban or suburban; the least healthy counties are more rural.

You can see how environmental factors like air pollution, socioeconomic factors like education, and health factors including obesity and insurance coverage, correlated with health results, including low birth weight babies and premature death, online at countyhealthrankings.org.





Website of the Week features News and Analysis from an African-American Perspective

Time again for our Website of the Week, when we showcase interesting and innovative online destinations.

February is African American History Month here in the United States, and so this week we feature a site that looks at news and culture from a black vantage point.

DREYFUSS:   "TheRoot.com is a news and analysis site that brings an African American perspective to world affairs, culture, and business. So that means we look at events that are taking place and we bring the particular perspective of our audience to these issues."

Joel Dreyfuss is managing editor of TheRoot.com, which is overseen by editor-in-chief Henry Lewis Gates, the renown Harvard University scholar.

The content of what they call a daily online magazine is constantly changing, but a sampling of recent articles includes an exploration of what "black history" should include and a financial portrait of African-Americans. Dreyfuss says this and other content help paint a portrait for an international audience that may want to know more about black Americans.

DREYFUSS:   "They can see what kind of issues are being debated. We try to give people a sense of the discussion that's taking place in black America, and what are some of the characters who may be less known but still culturally very important."

Joel Dreyfuss just came to The Root a couple of months ago, and he says he plans to increase coverage of business and the media, and he also said they hope to return to an early focus of the site, genealogy, which is part of the reason this site on news and culture from an African American perspective is called The Root. Tap into the conversation at TheRoot.com, or get the link from our site, VOAnews.com.

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You're listening to Our World, the weekly science and technology magazine from VOA News. I'm Art Chimes in Washington.  





One Laptop Per Child Project Has Ambitious Goal

In America, personal computing is central to how we conduct business and research, communicate with each other and educate ourselves and our children. However, much of the developing world still lags far behind in its access to computers and what they make possible. A Cambridge, Massachusetts, non-profit group called One Laptop Per Child is seeking to change all that by providing a rugged, affordable, Internet-connected laptop computer to every child in the world. VOA's Adam Phillips has more.   

PHILLIPS:  One Laptop Per Child's office feels more like a playroom for geeky adults than it does a non-profit with a mission to save the world. Plastic green laptops are strewn about in various stages of disassembly and upgrade, and the office is decorated with multicolor engineering and distribution charts, all somehow organized by a young, enthusiastic staff. But by providing laptops to all the world's children, especially the half a billion or more who live in extreme poverty, OLPC founder Nicholas Negroponte must dream big.   

NEGROPONTE:  "So what we did is we invented a technology that was low-cost enough that these laptops could be owned by the children, brought home and used for music, games, movies, books, and learning, 24/7."   

PHILLIPS:  Six years ago, the idea of designing and manufacturing a rugged, laptop computer for anything close to $100 seemed laughable to some…

NEGROPONTE:  "…  but it is already in the hands of 1.2 million children, 31 countries 19 languages, and one country, Uruguay, has just completed doing every single child in the country."  

PHILLIPS:  Few doubt that giving children access to computers is a good thing. But buying the tens of millions of laptops many countries need can be expensive, even at the current price of $160 each. Critics say there are cheaper and more efficient ways to deliver computing power to the world's children.

Steven Dukker, a pioneer in low-cost computing technology, is founder of NComputing. The company makes software and hardware that allow a single, $300 desktop computer to run programs and applications for dozens of students at the same time.

DUKKER:  "You think you've got your own computer all to yourself, and you can't tell the difference that you're working on something other than a computer and sharing this other resource -- and doing it at a much lower cost than having your own PC."

PHILLIPS:  NComputing networks are now in use at 40,000 sites in 100 countries.

But Nicholas Negroponte insists that when a child calls a laptop his own, it provides a personal connection to the technology - and to the use of that technology - that a terminal in a computer lab cannot.

NEGROPONTE: "Our kids take the laptops home at night and sleep with them. They think of it as an extension of themselves. It's a very different phenomenon."  

PHILLIPS:  Mathew Keller, OLPC's global advocacy director, says the real reason kids love their laptops so much is because they quickly learn to start customizing them to suit their own purposes.

KELLER:  "Up until the age of five, children learn in a very dynamic, engaging way. They learn how to walk and talk and they build things and they make mistakes and they knock them down, they lose their tempers, they build them back up again. But they are learning through that dynamic interaction with things around them."

PHILLIPS:  The main difficulty seems to be securing the funding and safe distribution for large numbers of computers in poor countries facing wars and poverty and challenging educational environments:    

KELLER:  "Let's take Afghanistan for example. The Ministry of Education says OLPC will end the isolation of its citizens. The UN in Afghanistan says this is the solution for girls' education in Afghanistan.

PHILLIPS:  OLPC founder Nicholas Negroponte believes that computers enable children - girls and boys - to become agents for social change. 

NEGROPONTE:  "We find in Peru that as many as 50 percent of the kids - because they are in remote villages - are teaching their parents how to read and write. And the impact in schools worldwide is that discipline problems go down, parents become more involved, kids literally run to school. So that kind of impact, to me, is extraordinarily heartwarming."  

PHILLIPS:  It's clear that various factors -- market forces, technical breakthroughs, local communication networks and, most importantly, political will -- must be aligned before all children get their hands on the tools they need to thrive and contribute in our interconnected world. Still, One Laptop Per Child is doing everything it can, one laptop computer at a time.

Adam Phillips, VOA News, Cambridge, Massachusetts.



New Solar Cell Design Produces Electricity with Much Less Silicon

A new method for making solar cells promises a cheaper way to generate electricity from the sun and new ways to integrate solar power into other products.

Solar cells, or photovoltaics, have typically been made using wafers of silicon that are stiff and brittle. California Institute of Technology physics professor Harry Atwater is making photovoltaics differently.

ATWATER:  "Our technology uses 50-100 times less silicon in the form of a sparse array of wires. And that sparse array of wires has exactly the same light absorption and electricity-collection properties as the conventional silicon wafer cell."

The tiny silicon wires stick up from the base, or substrate, looking something like a microscopic hair brush. And because the key component is an expensive, highly purified form of silicon, there's a real economic benefit to this design.

ATWATER:  "So what that means is, in terms of cost, is you can use 100 times less silicon. And that's potentially very significant."

But the silicon is what converts light into electricity, so you might think using so much less silicon would reduce the electrical output, but Atwater says that's not the case.

ATWATER:  "The light comes in and is both directly absorbed by the wires, and some of the light bounces around in between the wires. And that bouncing around or multiple scattering in between the wires results in dramatically enhanced absorption."

Q:  Is it correct to say that because the light is, as you put it, bouncing around, it gives the silicon more chances to interact with the light?

ATWATER:  "That's exactly right! In fact, the absorption enhancement that we see is in the range of 20 to 50 times the single-pass absorbance."

Atwater and his colleagues have made prototypes in the lab, and unlike most solar cells today, the product is flexible, not rigid.

That flexibility opens the door to potential new applications. Solar cells could be built into roofing materials, for example, saving money on installation.

ATWATER:  "Well, one of the things that's interesting about these flexible sheets is that they can be curved, so you could imagine putting them in unconventional forms, like on the surface of a vehicle or something like that, where you don't have a flat surface."

The Caltech professor says he's optimistic about commercializing his new solar cell design because the manufacturing process should not require development of any new technologies. And he stresses that it should reduce the cost of generating power from the sun.

ATWATER  "The wonderful thing about solar energy is that it's accessible and available everywhere in the world, from the cloudiest place in northern Europe to the sunniest place in north-central Africa to the Outback of Australia to South Asia. And in fact [the use of solar energy is] growing worldwide for that reason."

Harry Atwater's description of a new design for solar cells is published in the journal Nature Materials.




Use of Chimpanzees in Medical Research Sparks Controversy

And finally today ... Chimpanzees.  They're our closest animal relative. Native to central Africa, the highly intelligent primates share many of our physical and behavioral characteristics -- not surprisingly, since 98 percent of a chimpanzee's DNA is identical to humans. That similarity has made them attractive to medical researchers - and sparked a major debate over animal rights and medical ethics. VOA's Julie Taboh reports:

TABOH:  The United States is the only country in the world that still allows federally-funded medical experiments on chimpanzees. The practice is part of the process of developing and testing new vaccines and drugs that might prevent - or cure - potentially fatal human diseases. Proponents of the practice say medical tests involving chimps have helped save millions of lives worldwide. Animal welfare activists, on the other hand, say that subjecting chimpanzees to painful and often lethal experiments is cruel and inhumane.  

Dr. Hope Ferdowsian is Director of Research Policy at the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, PCRM.

FERDOWSIAN:  "Chimpanzees have been used for HIV research, for Hepatitis research. As a result they're darted [injected by gun] to put them down [anesthetized], so that they can be subjected to invasive experiments; all sorts of harmful and invasive procedures."

TABOH:  Besides its ethical objections, the PCRM argues that the use of chimpanzees in the lab is an ineffective way to advance medical research.

KUCINICH:  "As close as they are to human species, they're not close enough for any real scientific outcomes for drug testing and things like that."

TABOH:  That's Elizabeth Kucinich, wife of U.S. Congressman Dennis Kucinich. She's a long-time animal welfare advocate and serves as Director of Public Affairs for the Physicians Committee.

KUCINICH:  "Over 80 different vaccines have worked in chimpanzees with respect to HIV virus; none of them have worked in human beings."

TABOH:  Hope Ferdowsian, research policy director at the Physician's Committee says there are alternatives to the use of chimpanzees in research:

FERDOWSIAN:  "For example, in HIV research, we've learned a lot from human epidemiological studies and ethically conducted clinical trials. We've also learned a lot about the virus from mathematical and computer modeling. For hepatitis C vaccine we're learning a lot from in vitro or cell-based methods."    

TABOH:  Both Kucinich and Ferdowsian were on Capitol Hill recently, campaigning on behalf of newly introduced Congressional legislation that would eventually ban experiments on chimpanzees.

TABOH:  But the legislation is not to everyone's liking.

John VandeBerg, the director of the Southwest National Primate Research Center in San Antonio, Texas, says the use of chimpanzees in biomedical research is essential:

VANDEBERG:  "There are no other animals that can be infected with Hepatitis C virus, Hepatitis B Virus, or HIV. So in order to develop drugs to treat people who have Hepatitis B, Hepatitis C, particularly, we need to use chimpanzees to determine if the drugs can reduce the level of viruses in their blood and in their livers."

TABOH:  And the research that's been conducted on chimpanzees so far, says VandeBerg, has already benefitted much of the world's population:

VANDEBERG:  "Three hundred fifty million human beings in the world are infected with Hepatitis-B virus. Three hundred million people in the world are infected with Hepatitis-C virus. It would be unethical for us to turn our back on these people and not conduct the research that is so desperately needed to develop the drugs to treat these diseases, and the vaccines to prevent them in the future."

TABOH:  VandeBerg also defends his Texas research facility, saying that the animals in his primate research center receive better care than most people in the world.

VANDEBERG:  "They live in social groups, they live in indoor-outdoor  enclosures, they have heating in the winter, they have  air conditioning in the summer; our chimpanzees even  have televisions."

TABOH:  But such creature comforts don't alter the fact that chimpanzees used in medical research may suffer or die, and that's unacceptable to famed primate expert Jane Goodall.

GOODALL:  "We need to recognize at the outset that what we do to animals -  from their perspective certainly, and probably from ours - is morally wrong and unacceptable, and that  it's really important to follow through all these  exciting new leads into ways of doing research without  using animals."

TABOH:  But John VandeBerg of the Southwest National Primate Research Center says if the proposed legislation to phase out medical research on chimpanzees is passed, scientists like him will have to end their work:

VANDEBERG:  "It would be a great tragedy for humanity if research with chimpanzees were stopped."

TABOH:  The Great Ape Protection Act is currently making its way through the U.S. Congress, with over 140 co-sponsors in the House of Representatives.

While the proposed ban awaits Congressional action, medical testing on chimpanzees will continue to be a highly divisive - and hotly debated - issue.

Julie Taboh, VOA News, Washington




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That's our show for this week.

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Our program was edited by Rob Sivak. Bob Doughty is the technical director.

And this is Art Chimes, inviting you to join us online at voanews.com/ourworld or on your radio next Saturday and Sunday as we check out the latest in science and technology in Our World.