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Bloggers Breaking Ground in Communication
DAN GILLMOR, Director,
Center for Citizen Media , USA
Software technology that allows writers to easily post their own essays on the World Wide Web has challenged the traditional role of media organizations as gatekeepers to a mass audience. At a steadily increasing pace over the last several years, ordinary citizens have made themselves into reporters and commentators on the social scene. They have made a remarkably rapid ascent onto their own platform in the realm of social and political debate.
In late 2002, one of the most powerful members of the United States Congress got a lesson in the power of new media. At a birthday party for a colleague, Senator Trent Lott, a Republican from the state of Mississippi , sounded nostalgic for an ugly part of America 's past, when racial segregation was official policy in much of the land. The statement drew little notice from the mass media.
But some writers of the then-nascent Internet journals called weblogs, or blogs for short, were not so willing to let it go. From the political left and right, the bloggers, as these writers have come to be known, expressed outrage. Some of their ire was directed at the media for its inattention, and after a few days of the bloggers' attacks, major media organizations decided to cover the story. A few days after that, Lott's support among his colleagues dwindled and he ultimately stepped down from his Senate Republican leadership post.
The incident was an early warning of sorts, for politicians, public figures of all kinds, and people in the media. It signaled the accelerating evolution of communications. Blogs were coming into their own, and they have become more and more of a force.
What are blogs, exactly? There's no single definition, but most have at least three things in common. They are typically composed of short essays, also called postings. The postings are shown in reverse chronological order -that is, most recent items at the top. And they have hyperlinks pointing to other Web pages.
Blogs are a conversational medium. Many of the best blogs let readers post comments, and bloggers are fond of pointing at each other's work to highlight and discuss it.
They are also conversational because the best blogs are written with a distinctly human voice. We can contrast this with the typical newspaper article, which feels as though it was written according to a formula and by a committee, not a person. The blog's very humanity is a vital boost to the form.
Blogs should also be understood in their wider context, as a proxy for the many different ways that average Internet users are now able to publish (in a variety of formats, including audio and video) their own works online. This is part of the democratization of media, both in creation and distribution. The tools we use to create digital content are increasingly powerful but decreasingly expensive. And we can show our work to a potentially global audience. There is no analog in human history for this development.
According to the Pew Internet Project, a nonprofit organization researching the Internet's impact on various aspects of American life, blog reading has risen along with blog creation. More than a quarter of the U.S. population has read a blog and, while the numbers flattened somewhat during 2005, mass-media coverage has given blogs higher visibility than ever.
Bloggers have won the most attention for their writing about highly topical issues in politics, technology,
and other such fields. But we must recognize that most blogs-the vast majority of the millions now online-are not aimed at large audiences yet have high value. For some bloggers, their online journals have essentially replaced the traditional letter home to family and close friends. The value the reader gains from those highly personal blogs must surely be higher per reader than the equivalent value of the most popular sites.
Blogging took off first in the United States . This was predictable, given that the early online tools came from U.S. software developers. But it is becoming a global phenomenon. China , for example, has some 5 million bloggers, a rough estimate and a relatively low percentage of the population. More and more Chinese people are launching their own blogs despite censorship by government (with the assistance of technology companies). Africa has the lowest blogger numbers of any continent; Ethan Zuckerman, co-founder of the Global Voices Online project at Harvard University 's Berkman Center for Internet & Society, says the best estimates suggest there are about 10,000 bloggers in sub-Saharan Africa . Numbers are growing in the Middle East and North Africa , he says, with some 50,000 mostly young people posting to their blogs.
Among the most ardent blogging nations outside the United States is France, with more than 2 million bloggers, according to software executive Loic Le Meur. They're having an impact. He says three government ministers have invited bloggers to interview them; Le Meur was himself part of one of those sessions. He notes that blogs are becoming one of the most important means of expression in that nation and are causing some worry in the ranks of mainstream journalism.
The relationship between bloggers and journalists has been noteworthy. Some professionals jumped into blogging enthusiastically. Others have dismissed the entire genre.
I started what is believed to have been the first blog by an American mass-media journalist in 1999, when blogging software was only just beginning to appear. I was writing about technology, and the blog, which appeared in addition to my newspaper column at the San Jose Mercury News in California 's Silicon Valley , became an essential part of my job. Why? Because it enabled me to have more of a conversation with my readers. I'd learned quickly, writing about technology in Silicon Valley , the heart of the high-tech industry, that my readers collectively knew much more than I did, and the blog was another way of learning.
Since then, blogging has slowly intersected with the news business. The Pew Internet Project found that American journalists are much more likely to read blogs than the general public. This is unsurprising, because blogs are serving a role somewhat like the trade journals, which are valuable source material for reporters in any number of disciplines.
Even now, however, most professional journalists do not publish blogs. The format, which tends to encourage a personal voice, has felt somewhat unnatural to professionals who are trained to keep their own feelings and beliefs out of what they write and broadcast. Opinion columnists are the obvious exception to this general rule, and several business columnists have been among the best in the genre, offering deeper insights into the issues they cover in the print editions. This approach is also working well for journalists who cover other kinds of topics, notably entertainment.
Blogs can also bring a quality to news coverage that is still somewhat rare: transparency. News people demand transparency from others but have typically been less willing to shine lights on their own business. This is changing for the better, and blogs are a useful tool in that process. CBS News's PublicEye blog, for example, offers insights into the broadcasters' own operations.
Blogs have turned out to be particularly well suited to breaking news, such as natural disasters, about which readers are hungry for every scrap of new information.
In one especially notable case, the blog replaced the front page for a time. The New Orleans Times-Picayune, forced out of its own building along with other residents of the city that was nearly destroyed by Hurricane Katrina, helped keep its readers informed via a blog when the print edition couldn't be published.
Blogs by journalists make up a tiny percentage of all blogs, of course. Some bloggers do superb journalism on their own, competing for attention from readers and respect from sources. Bill Gates, the co-founder and chairman of Microsoft Corporation, has given interviews to bloggers who write only online. Other corporate executives are learning that key bloggers can be an excellent conduit to the general public.
Inevitably, media companies have considered capturing the best blogging talent for themselves. One company Weblogs Inc., a producer of niche blogs on topics like technology and automobiles, was purchased by Time Warner's AOL division for a reported $15 million. More such deals are likely. But even if major media organizations try to co-opt the blogging movement, they can't succeed. The financial barrier to entry in this marketplace is close to zero already. Anyone with talent and time can create a blog-or podcast or other media site-without spending a fortune.
It is also inevitable that the rise of blogging has led to questions and criticisms about bloggers' frequent willingness to shoot verbally before aiming. Nor are fairness and thoroughness thought to be among bloggers' best qualities. But in a marketplace of ideas, inaccuracies tend to be found and pointed out, and reputations rise and fall on quality to a serious degree. Meanwhile, the readers of blogs are learning to apply appropriate skepticism to what they read online.
Blogs and related citizen media are not going away. They have become a liberating venue for people's voices. A long-standing maxim of American media has held that freedom of the press belongs to those who own a press. In the new era of digital media, we all own a press-and the more voices, the better.
The opinions expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect the views or policies of the US . Government.
Text courtesy: Global Issues/March 2006 eJournal USA issue. American center in Kathmandu.
Solar Energy From Roof to Grid
Friedrich Geiger , Germany
The German solar industry is booming. The sector achieves a turnover of three billion euros, markets are growing by 20% a year and the stock exchange is rewarding its prospects with higher and higher share prices. The industry leader, SolarWorld AG, has even become the market leader in the United States as a result of its acquisition of Shell's solar cell production facilities. One aspect of the takeover that received little attention could, however, transform the entire solar energy market. Shell is reported to have sold its production plants for silicon solar cells because it wanted to concentrate on newer solar energy technologies - namely, thin-film modules. "This silicon-free technology will probably be more competitive than conventional silicon-based solar solutions," explained the company.
Thin-film modules are based on a different technology that requires far less raw material. As a result, they offer considerable opportunities for reducing production costs. First-generation silicon cells will thus face increasing competitive pressure from the second generation thin-film cells. By 2010, Sulfurcell, the Berlin-based manufacturer, aims to produce thin-film modules for half the current cost. Producers of silicon cells will then no longer be able to compete, believes chief executive Nikolaus Meyer.
Thin-film modules are also particularly attractive because there is a shortage of the silicon required in conventional cells, explains Claas Helmke, head of the European division of Uni-Solar. This is because the silicon used in solar cells is usually the waste material left over from the production of high-quality silicon for computer microchips. As Helmke explains, additional production of silicon would not be economic. Supply problems of this kind do not affect producers of thin-film modules.
Lars Waldmann, spokesperson of Schott Solar, sees another advantage of thin-film modules: they offer more varied application possibilities. The semi-transparent modules made by Schott can, for example, be fitted in buildings in place of conventional windowpanes. On the other hand, UniSolar's flexible modules can also be bonded onto surfaces on which rigid crystalline cells would shatter -for example on flexible metal roofs. However, the thin-film modules do have one disadvantage: their efficiency- in other words, the proportion of the light energy that the modules can transform into electricity-only reaches 6-7%, compared to the figure of roughly 15% for conventional solar cells. The lower production costs per kilowatt are only an advantage when the area required does not play any great role. However, the Japanese manufacturer Mitsubishi Heavy has already developed thin-film modules with an efficiency of 12%.
Yet, the researchers are one step ahead. The Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems is already developing third generation solar modules. These consist of three solar cells, one behind the other, that extract the highest possible levels of energy from the different wavelengths of light. They achieve an efficiency of 25%. Concentrix Solar GmbH, a spinoff from the Freiburgbased Fraunhofer Institute, plans to put the first of these new modules on the market in two years.
Text courtesy: Deutschland 2/2006 issue. Embassy of Germany in Kathmandu-ed.
The human being only develops with the aid of others
"To become a person, the young child must be surrounded by people and follow what is in reality an initiation course". 
From the biology of passion to the World Francophone e-University (UNFM), an interview with eminent researcher and teacher Jean-Didier Vincent, a great populariser of the latest discoveries about the human brain.
Jean-Didier Vincent is a former researcher at the Centre national de la recherche scientifique (CNRS) [French Centre for Scientific Research. He is today notably a member of the Académie des sciences [French Academy of Sciences], former director of the Neurobiology Institute at the CNRS, teacher at the Institut universitaire de France [University Institute of France] and president of the national curriculum council at the Ministry of National Education and Research. He is one of the pioneers of endocrinology, a recent branch of biology which studies the interactions between glands and the nervous system, and regards the brain itself as a gland.
Q. You are in the habit of saying that "man is the most passionate of the animals". Why?
Jean-Didier Vincent: 550 million years ago a major revolution occurred among the species: the emergence of the vertebrates. Unlike the invertebrates, these animals have a nervous system connected to a brain. This is situated in the front of the head, where most of the sensory systems are located: sight, hearing, sense of smell, taste, etc. This system allows them to experience what is happening in their bodies: thirst, hunger, pain, etc. All this transformed their behaviour. Over time, the vertebrates (first fish, then amphibians, reptiles, birds, mammals, primates, apes and, finally, man) developed strategies to meet the needs of their bodies.
They began to feel not only sensations, but emotions. In the course of evolution, species develop towards more emotions. These reach their peak with man, in whom they can become passions. Passion is the reflective awareness of emotion: my emotion, I am capable of reading it on the features of others and this "reading" is reflected in what I experience myself. I am an individual, a being totally unique because I am capable of understanding what another feels (hate or love) through my own emotion, and to express it. This is why "man is the most passionate of the animals".
Q. What room is there for man’s freedom if he is governed by his passions?
Jean-Didier Vincent: According to present-day supporters of creationism and "intelligent design" [ 2 ], man is the creature, the product, the plaything of a whim or a higher intelligence. There is no free will in this. Biology teaches us exactly the opposite. Man is the most individualistic of the animals. The distinctive feature of the human is being left to his own devices. He always has a certain degree of freedom. Even when brimming over with emotion, even when blinded by hatred, a killer can always choose not to strike. It is from this freedom that the dignity of being a person stems.
Admittedly, it is a conditional freedom. It is true that a newborn Iraqi alone in the world after his village has been bombed does not have a terrific amount of freedom. Because the human being is "anthropotrophic": he feeds on other human beings. A child brought up entirely alone from birth, without his eyes ever meeting those of another human being, will never become a man. He needs his mother to talk to him, to touch him, to, one way or another, make him feel that she loves him, that she is there. Similarly, left on his own he will not speak, even though his brain is programmed for this function. To become a person, the young child must be surrounded by people and follow what is in reality an initiation course: a transition from imitating the other to imitating oneself, then from imitating oneself to awareness of self. It is all constructed with the aid of others.
Q. Is your thirst for science still unquenchable?
Jean-Didier Vincent: Once a researcher always a researcher. I have retired from the CNRS, but that doesn’t mean I do any less theorising. I am currently working on the field of the olfactory system, which is a rather neglected sense. The olfactory system has a special property which is not shared by the other sensory systems: it has structural plasticity and a capacity for neurogenesis (producing new neurons).
It was believed for a long time that people were born with a fixed number of neurons, cells that are so specialised that they cannot divide. They were inevitably destined to die off. Then, recently, researchers discovered that hundreds of thousands of new neuronal cells are formed inside the brain every day. They then migrate through the front part of the brain which serves the sense of smell, and replace the old neurons in this olfactory bulb. It is probable that other areas of the brain, especially those associated with memory, also benefit from the same kind of renewal. So the brain is not something fixed and condemned to irreversible decline.
Q. Do you have other projects?
Jean-Didier Vincent: For quite a while I have been travelling often to Africa where I am working hard to set up the World Francophone e-University, an initiative of Malian sheikh Modibo Diarra, a former Nasa space pilot. Via the satellite, the students are able to attend live courses taught on a giant screen by lecturers located in France and with whom they can discuss matters in real time. This project is primarily designed to train school teachers and nurses in Sub-Saharan regions. They are the keys to a new departure for this lost continent.
Interviewed by: Emmanuel Thévenon Journalist, Label FRANCE , Embassy of France . Kathmandu
Israeli envoy accredited to Economic Community of West African States 28-May-2006
(Communicated by Ministry of Foreign Affairs Spokesman's Bureau)
Ambassador to Nigeria Noam Katz, who is also accredited to Ghana, on Thursday ( 25 May 2006) presented his credentials to Dr. Mohammed Ibn Chambas, the secretary-general of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) at the organization's headquarters in the Nigerian capital, Abuja.
Ibn Chambas welcomed the establishment of official relations between ECOWAS and the State of Israel and praised Israel for its great contribution to the economic and social development of West Africa. Ambassador Katz thanked the secretary-general for accepting his appointment and expressed the hope that the formalization of relations would bring about a deepening of cooperation between Israel and the countries of the region, particularly in the fields of agriculture, environmental quality, culture, and scientific and technological development.
ECOWAS was established in 1975 for the purpose of advancing economic integration and creating an economic and political bloc in West Africa; a region rich in resources such as diamonds and oil, but which suffered from the ongoing problems of underdevelopment, poverty, and the lack of political stability. Today
ECOWAS plays key roles not only in economic integration and development, but also in politics and security, for example through its peacekeeping forces in the region and its monitoring of the West African arms trade. The latter is at the center of international efforts to prevent small arms from reaching the hands of terrorists and organized criminals.
ECOWAS has 15 member states -- Burkina Fasso, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea Bissau, Gambia, Ivory Coast, Togo, Cape Verde, Liberia, Mali, Nigeria, Niger, Sierra Leone, and Senegal -- with a total population of some 220 million. Israel maintains diplomatic ties with all members of the organization except Mali, Guinea, and Niger.
Received through electronic mail-ed.
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