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Internet Brings Jobs to Refugees
Kenya has some of the largest refugee camps in the world, where displaced but well-educated people can be stuck for 17 years in crowded conditions and face crushing poverty. The United States has lots of small businesses that need little tasks done that aren't economically feasible at typical wage rates. San Francisco-based nonprofit organization Samasource saw an opportunity to help both groups.
The organization acts as an intermediary between the refugees and the businesses. The businesses get tasks done that are too small for American workers to do, while the Kenyan refugees get three times or more what they would typically be paid. For example, one solar panels repairman in the US worked through Samasource to get refugees to look through satellite photos of American cities to find houses with solar set-ups. Such houses represented potential sales leads.
While some think these kinds of jobs exploit the refugees, it's hard to call it exploitation when they're getting paid $1 to $2 an hour, and their next highest-paying job opportunity is breaking rocks in a quarry for 50 cents a day. Plus, the Internet-based jobs teach skills and connect the refugees with the global community. Indeed, some experts say that these kinds of tasks can help address the overwhelming problems of poverty found in many countries throughout the world.
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Building a Sun with Coconuts
The work proceeding on the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) has been taking some strange twists. Then again, you have to expect that, given the huge number of technical challenges that will have to be surmounted in building the world's largest nuclear fusion reactor. When completed in 2018, it will have taken $10 billion dollars, tens of thousands of tons of steel and concrete, and more exotic substances, such as beryllium, niobium, titanium, tungsten, liquid nitrogen and helium...and burnt coconuts.
Coconuts? Yes indeed. And not just any coconuts, either, but ones from a particular Indonesian island that became ripe in 2002. To create and maintain a fusion generator, you need a vacuum and ITER's vacuum will take up 10,000 cubic meters. And the vacuum pumps that suck the air out of the area will also need to clean waste helium out of the reactor, to say nothing of the debris generated when hot plasma from the generator does hit the wall. The only thing that can generate the kind of vacuum ITER needs is a very large cryogenic pump several of them, actually.
Cryopumps capture gas molecules on a cold surface. These pumps will be trying to capture hydrogen and helium, two of the most elusive molecules to catch because they are so tiny. They have to be caught adsorption, where atoms of a gas stick loosely to a solid surface. The solid surface needs to have a huge surface area to work something like a sponge, with lots of internal surfaces. After a 20-year search for the ideal substance, the team discovered the best one to use for adsorption is charcoal. After testing charcoal made from a huge range of both natural and man-made materials, it was discovered that coconut-shell charcoal adsorbs the best for their purposes. And surprisingly, where the coconuts were made and when they were grown affects the quality of the resulting charcoal. This is why ITER now has a few tons of vintage 2002 Indonesian coconut-shell charcoal just waiting to be used.
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Coming Soon: Cuba-US Optical Fiber Cable
Miami-based TeleCuba Communications Inc. reported that it has received permission from the US government to lay the first optical communications fiber from the US to Cuba. The company said it plans to have the fiber operational by the middle of 2011. Currently, it is still waiting for permission from the Cuban government to land the cable.
Unlike the other countries in the western hemisphere, Cuba is not linked to the outside world via fiber optics. It uses satellite links, which are slow and expensive. The fiber optic cable could make phone calls to and from Cuba very cheap, depending on where the Cuban government decides to set the rates. It could also change the picture for Internet access, though the government may decide to maintain restrictions.
TeleCuba isn't entirely alone in bringing fiber optics to Cuba. Venezuela has announced that it is also building a fiber to Cuba. It could beat Telecuba's connection by getting to the island next year. But distance may be an issue: TeleCuba's fiber will only have to travel 110 miles, but Venezuela's must stretch 966 miles. On a historical note, TeleCuba's cable will travel along the same route as a dead 1950s copper telephone cable from Key West to an eastern suburb of Havana. It will have enough capacity to support more than 160 million simultaneous phone calls as opposed to the 144 simultaneous calls the copper cable could handle.
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