Good News Notes: “At a park in the east Amman neighborhood of Marka, a local street cat stalks two small birds past shrubs and saplings. Deema Assaf, an architect turned environmentalist, stops talking for a moment to watch the interaction. Only a few feet from the oblivious birds, the cat freezes. Then it loses interest…
Tag: Jordan
Opec member urges oil producers to focus more on renewable energy
Good News Notes: “The finance minister of Iraq, one of the founding members of the global oil cartel Opec, has made an unprecedented call to fellow oil producers to move away from fossil fuel dependency and into renewable energy, ahead of a key Opec meeting. Ali Allawi, who is also the deputy prime minister of Iraq,…
Engineer discovers how to extract water from air and sunlight
Good News Notes: “When you have sugar in a bowl, that sugar gets a little clumpy over time,” says Cody Friesen. “Have you ever thought about why?” Friesen, who teaches materials science at Arizona State University, explains that the sugar absorbs moisture from the air around it. “The science term for that is the sugar…
Saving the Red Sea’s coral reefs by building fake ones
Good News Notes: “Israel’s bustling city of Eilat, at the northern tip of the Gulf of Aqaba and Red Sea, is renowned for beaches, hotels and one of the world’s northernmost coral reefs. Magnificent, colorful, diverse corals, sponges, giant clams, fish and other marine life make these reefs a national and world treasure. Barely 40…
In Jordan, female engineers lead the way in sustainable agriculture
Good News Notes: “Under the hot Aqaba sun, an all-female team of recent Jordanian university graduates took turns planting lettuce and bok choy seeds in the desert soil. Just minutes earlier, they had prepared a special compost blend — a mix of peat moss and ground coconut shell — which allowed them to turn the…