The Middle East and North Africa (MENA) are characterised by the scorching hot desert weather and the dry climate. As a consequence of this, large cities must rely on vast amounts of energy for heating and cooling, in order to survive. With the increase in infrastructure development in the last 20 years, the MENA region has experienced even higher demand for electricity. More and more cities are updating their power infrastructure, and new buildings are being constructed.

Without knowing how energy is used in a region, it is impossible to determine which sources are most efficient and plausible. Energy intensity measures the amount of energy consumed per GDP produced. As Al-Sabawi explained, the MENA region’s energy intensity today is 60 per cent higher than that of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries, and 40 per cent above the world’s average. What this boils down to is the fact that the MENA region uses more energy with respect to its economic production. Energy intensity can be affected by numerous factors, for example, the weather. Norway, with its Scandinavian climate, boosts one of the highest ratios in the world. But, mainly, this means that the MENA region is consuming much more energy than it is producing.

The price of energy is directly correlated to energy intensity, and this is particularly true in Palestine. With its quickly rising demands, it has one of the highest electricity prices in the world. Oil is not an option for Palestine, wind power is still too unreliable, and solar power does not make sense due to the space restrictions of a small, highly dense territory.

So, where can Palestine turn to meet its growing energy demands? The answer may just be right under our noses. The earth absorbs 50 per cent of the sun’s energy, and stores it as a clean alternative source. Usually, when we talk about geothermal energy, it is meant to encapsulate the steam and hot water reservoirs, as well as the hot dry rock, which could be found below ground in some regions like Iceland. But, another way to extract heat from the Earth is through geothermal heat pumps. At a constant temperature of 17 degrees Celcius a few metres below ground, pipes containing a fluid can be buried and connected to a heat pump. When the temperature below ground is higher than the outside temperature in the winter, it is used for heating, and in the summer when lower than outside – for air conditioning.

MENA has already attempted to harness this energy with its geothermal building plants, and, in doing so, decrease electricity prices. “Heating and cooling account for 60 per cent of a typical building’s energy”, as Al-Sabawi explained, “and the best technology to reduce [their consumption] is geothermal.”
Currently, MENA Geothermal has three large heat pump systems in Palestine, each boosting energy savings to a staggering 70 per cent. As a result, they’ve been awarded the contract for a 1.6 megawatt power plant at the University of Megada in Jordan, the largest geothermal system in the entire region.
But, in order to lift their model off the ground, they worked hard to reduce the cost of geothermal energy in order to make it fiscally, as well as environmentally, sustainable. This was done through a variety of methods, such as by using local materials. Also, they plan to build plants near residential buildings in order to be able to provide heating and cooling for an entire community. Investors seeking a financial return can then invest capital in geothermal plants and sell the energy to nearby consumers at prices that could be 50 per cent lower than the current cost of electricity, since the return of geothermal energy is so high.

Right now, however, highly subsidised energy prices make it extremely hard for alternative energies to progress in the region. But, if Palestine is able to transition to the effective and efficient energy geothermal power provides, other countries may soon will follow suit. As Khaled Al-Sabawi puts it, “It is time for the Arab people to take matters into their own hands and build their own communities right.”

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The cell phone represents, above all, a connection to the world. People who often work away from their families can stay in touch with their loved ones with a simple device the size of a small box that they put in their pocket. It gives people security, ensuring that even if they are in the most remote place, they can still call someone, get help, and connect to the rest of the world. Farmers in Uganda are now using cell phones to exchange information about markets and prices, and where they can get livestock and crops. This mobility offers the possibility of creating infrastructure where it is missing: building cell phone towers is much cheaper than building land lines, which do not exist in many regions in Africa.

In this same vein, a new program for producing animated educational videos that can be watched on most cell phones has been developed by a team from the University of Illinois. The Scientific Animations Without Borders program is a new way to engage the public in developing countries, and spread education to places that lack other channels of communication. In one video, safe insect control methods are demonstrated, while in another farmers are taught how to use neem tree juice to spray as an insecticide on cowpea crops. Such initiatives empower individuals by letting them obtain vital information, no matter where they are.

Mobile payment represents another popular way in which cell phone technology is changing how people around the world are living. Though near-field communication (NFC) – a short-range wireless technology that allows for, among other things, credit card payments, is currently the most ubiquitous way of using cell phones as wallets – a new system that has been gaining ground in Africa, and does not require any kind of additional hardware improvement on phones.

This system does not require credit card numbers, but relies on the simplest concept every phone user shares: the phone number. “Everyone knows their cell phone number. Not everyone knows their credit card number,” Mark Britto, chief executive officer of the start-up Boku, explained to the New York Times in 2009. The company uses a system that receives a customer’s phone number after a purchase and sends it to the buyer to confirm. In South Africa, only half of the adult population has a bank account, and in Thailand only a quarter do, making mobile banking the safer choice for most people.

But one of the most innovative ideas for cell phones is to use them for health diagnostics. Developed by the University of California, Berkeley’s Bioengineering department, CellScope, a mobile microscope attachment can use any regular cell phone camera to analyze samples for diseases such as tuberculosis or sickle cell anaemia. The idea is that medical experts will be able to perform complex high-resolution light microscopy on blood or sputum samples placed on a slide in real time, rather than waiting for days for assistance when in remote areas.

In the near future, cell phones will likely become an even bigger part of our lives, with internet on-the-go and geolocation evolving to create new social norms. We will be much more connected, with the developing world leading the way. The cell phone revolution in developing countries will spark new forms of entrepreneurship, due to the platform’s low cost and its potential to replace the computers that many people don’t have with a device that can perform simpler, but still necessary, tasks.

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It is natural to be afraid in the aftermath of the tragic events in Japan that have reminded us how weak we are against the forces of nature. One of the countries that was probably best prepared for such a large-scale disaster has been forced to race against time to prevent the release of radiation. And yet, this massive accident could have been avoided had the reactors been updated to make up for the outdated pressure suppression system, which presented 90 per cent probability of bursting in the event of overheating.

The safety of nuclear reactors should not be judged by this sole accident. Overall, the safety procedures that are in place are extensive and are guarded by a large number of highly trained nuclear engineers with the use of advanced electronic detectors. The amount of radiation emitted is continuously monitored inside and around the plant, and it amounts to a mere 0.01 millisievert (mSv) per year – a neglible level of radiation. It is irrational to be fearful of this magnitude, when radiation is in fact all around us, created by everday occurrences such as airline travel, X-rays and smoking. And it makes no sense to single out nuclear energy as a source of potential natural catastrophe when other technologies like offshore oil drilling present a much higher potential risk to the environment as was witnessed last year.

It is paradoxical that the environmentalists are the ones who oppose nuclear energy, when this same technology is our best chance to reverse climate change. On average, uranium produces 25,000 times more energy than coal with the same amount of material. Furthermore, the current rates of nuclear energy development will offset 0.8 to 1.8 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. In order to reverse climate change, alternative energies like wind and solar need to be used, but only by combining them with nuclear can we realistically reach a carbon free future.

Nuclear technology is constantly improving, with newer generation reactors able to reprocess the waste materials (although none are operating in the US) and using passive feedback systems. Also, the new breed of reactors are much safer and more economical – they produce less waste and have a higher life cycle. The slow rate at which newer generations of reactors are being built is a result of the difficult political consensus over nuclear energy.

The main drawback of nuclear energy is that since it’s produced in thermal reactors like coal and gas, it needs an extensive amount of water from nearby rivers to cool off the very hot rods in the reactor. This poses an additional design constraint for reactors that are not situated near oceans and that could significantly alter the temperature of nearby lakes or rivers. During the heat wave in Europe a few years ago the temperature of the water in the cooling lakes raised dramatically, thereby endangering fish and wildlife.

Despite all the safety measures, and the low risk probability, nuclear energy will always have a large amount of potential destruction, if unleashed by an unprecedented climate disaster or a terrorist attack. But still, the world is full of technologies that have potential risks and have contributed to deadly accidents – from hydro dams to mine explosions and structural collapses. No risk-free technology exists, and certainly continuing the unscientific stigmatization of nuclear energy does not help. We need not to fear nuclear itself, but the consequences of not acting now to fight climate change.

Only through nuclear energy can we realistically decrease greenhouse gases while driving forward the development of alternative green energies.

—

Alexander Kunev is a U3 Mechanical Engineering student. He can be reached at alexander.kunev@mail.mcgill.ca.

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Most biofuels, like ethanol, are produced by releasing sugars from stored starches in agricultural products such as corn or sugarcane. This is accomplished by the method of enzyme digestion, which breaks down polymeric macromolecules into their smaller building blocks. The sugars are left to ferment, and then distilled and dried – a long process requiring a lot of energy. The Oak Ridge researchers were able to limit the amount of lignin – a chemical compound found in the cell wall of plants – by encoding a piece of RNA that would limit three quarters of the lignin production and placing it into the switchgrass’s DNA. Since lignin is the main element that keeps the cells together, decreasing the production makes it easier to access the sugars that are trapped inside plants. As a result, the conversion rate from biomass to fuel shoots up significantly, with up to a 40 per cent improvement.

But is it possible to completely replace the fossil fuels used in transportation with biomass products? Risks associated with the conversion to biomass include a potential change in biodiversity, since a bigger portion of land would need to be used to cultivate the appropriate plants. According to the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, converting land for biofuel production would translate into a massive burst of greenhouse gases. The conversion of a hectare of prairie land could liberate up to 300 tonnes of carbon dioxide, and this number goes up to 1,000 tonnes if a forest is removed to make room for biofuels.

Then there is the question of the energy efficiency of biofuels. For certain agricultural products, the energy savings can vary from about 25 to 70 per cent, and for others – such as corn – there are no energy savings when compared to traditional gasoline. Ethanol, on the other hand, is usually mixed with gasoline because its energy density – the amount of energy stored in a unit of volume – is 34 per cent lower, but this is made up by its higher octane rating, which makes it overall more efficient.

Another major factor in choosing a biofuel replacement will be its ability to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. There is a 75 per cent net reduction in emissions when using ethanol instead of gasoline, and a 90 per cent reduction when compared to diesel emissions. But according to the International Energy Agency, the biofuels would need to account for 26 per cent of global fuel produced in order to limit the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide to 450 parts per million by 2050.

When it comes to genetically modified crops, the controversial nature of GM foods undoubtedly becomes a factor, and many farmers are still proceeding with caution. The challenge of creating ecosystems with genetically modified crops can seem daunting, as there have been many cases of regular crops being contaminated by GM ones. This might then put the entire biofuel market in the hands of a couple big producers of genetic crops who have patented the lignin-reducing technology.

In the coming years, ethanol and other biofuels will inarguably be a part of the alternative energies explored for use in the transportation industry. Biofuel production does have the ability to distribute energy sources geographically, but given the initial carbon emissions associated with converting land into biofuel crops – along with the decrease in space available for food production – another fuel source may need to replace biofuels as frontrunner in the alternative energy race.

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The theory of everything

By the 20th century, scientists were already on a quest to find a theory of everything. The discovery of the laws of electromagnetism by James Maxwell in the late 19th century, and the development of the special theory of relativity by Einstein in 1905 have encouraged scientists’ attempts to unify the laws of physics.

However, no such unifying theory has yet been verified. The strongest candidate – string theory – hasn’t yet been proven in an experimental setting and would require an atom smasher the size of the galaxy for us to test it.

What would a theory of everything serve? Its development would give us an enormous power to answer some of the oldest and most puzzling questions about the universe. What came before the Big Bang? Was there even such a thing as before? How many dimensions are there, and why can’t we see the higher ones? Such a theory might also be able to give us the basic tools to construct a wormhole, a hypothetical bridge in the curvature of spacetime that could give us the ability to travel back in time (but only to the point where the time machine was built) or help us make interstellar travel that exceeds the speed of light a feature of daily life.

The origin of the universe

Ultimately, the Big Bang is the holy grail of physics. It can unlock the final frontier of human understanding of the universe, and a lot has been going on in the last few decades to uncover these secrets. The real mystery, however – and the discovery that could bring us even closer to the moment of the Big Bang – are gravitational waves. Predicted by Einstein in 1916, gravitational waves are fluctuations in the curvature of spacetime, which propagate as a shock wave.

Matt Dobbs, professor of Physics at McGill, is trying to detect the trace of gravity waves left from the increased inflation in the beginning of time. His team is currently working on the EBEX project, which aims to send a balloon to the stratosphere in order to investigate for these traces, and try to push our picture of the Big Bang up until 10^-35 seconds after the event. When asked by The Daily, Dobbs affirmed that these waves do in fact exist, adding that he’s hopeful they will be detected in the next twenty to thirty years.

Dark energy

A long-standing problem for physicists dating back to Isaac Newton is the inexplicable behaviour of gravity on a large scale. If the gravity force is always attractive, then why doesn’t the universe collapse into itself? This question was put to Newton by a priest, who believed that in order to maintain this “metastable” state the universe must be a gigantic clock, wound up by God at the beginning of time and obeying the laws of physics. Later on in the 20th century, the mechanical clock was replaced by a cosmological constant, an antigravity force pushing the stars apart. We now know this cosmological constant simply by the name of dark energy, which accounts for 73 per cent of the total mass-energy in the universe.

Finding the true nature of dark energy will reveal the ultimate fate of the universe – whether it will expand indefinitely until it freezes, or reverse the expansion and be crushed into itself.

However, for Dobbs, dark energy is one of the biggest unknowns, given that it is still a hypothetical form of energy. Dark energy also can’t explain anything about the initial state of the universe, because it first appeared at a much later time. One of the things that his research is trying to uncover are pockets of dark energy, by using large telescopes such as the South Pole Telescope, even if such methods presume gravity is exactly as described in Einstein’s general relativity. A slight deviation in our measurements of relativity might lead to fundamental change in theoretical physics, and the relativity equations might have to be modified, if possible.

But is the theory of general relativity wrong, and what would this mean for physics? According to Reg Cahill, professor of Physics from Flinders University in Australia, there are numerous sets of experiments that show the effects of changes in the speed of light. But such results are not yet recognized because for now, error probability in terms of measurement of the mass of Earth, the moon, or the sun, is inserted. Cahill explains this with the artificial creation of the dark energy concept, to account for the extra gravitation pull. If there are errors in relativity, this would effectively deal a great blow to dark energy. And mostly it would mean that that the laws of physics might have to be reworked, and that the last 100 years have given us a lot of unproven theories, but not enough solid ground to build on towards a theory of everything.

Whether we would be able to answer all of the fundamental inquiries about the universe is without importance in the face of the growing divisions within physics. A unification of gravity and quantum mechanics is needed in order to be able to answer the growing questions. Only then could we have as clear a picture of physics as Newton had, and start discovering ideas and inventions that could completely revolutionize our lives.

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On Tuesday, Americans mourned the horrific shooting in Tucson, Arizona, and now it’s a time to grieve and to reflect, with the sentiment that things can’t go on as they currently are. I too am shaken by this, and my thoughts are with the families of those who died or were injured by Jared Loughner – especially Gabrielle Giffords who is left in grave condition and faces a long recovery.

But why should this tragedy be any different than all the other shootings and what is its meaning in the long history of political and social violence in the United States?

Now everybody is blaming Sarah Palin for the already infamous map of twenty Democratic districts indicated with crosshairs, inciting the opposition to “rebel” against them because they voted for health care reform. Of course, this is unlikely to result in a big backlash against Republicans, as in 1995 after Oklahoma, first because Obama, in the spirit of his fabled bipartisanship, is simply not going to use it to his advantage, and second, because as the liberal media are quick to blame Palin, others are remind us that the Democrats used the same violent rhetoric during the Bush years, with calls to murder George W. Bush. This doesn’t mean, however, that Palin isn’t socially responsible for what has happened.

A direct link between her and the shooter is obviously a ludicrous idea, but bearing in mind that Loughner is suspected to be mentally ill, he may have been inspired indirectly by some of this hate rhetoric – if not by the map with the crosshairs itself, then maybe by some of the Palin Tea Party supporters who recycle her propaganda.

I am always amazed to see how an act that is obviously wrong and unethical is perceived by Americans not for what it shows, but for what the person doing it says it is. It is incorrect to say that Sarah Palin is to blame for the terrorist act of a mentally unstable person, but she should also take responsibility and acknowledge what her map showed. One of her aides said that those were not meant to be crosshairs of a gun, but “surveyor’s symbols” – the truth is, it doesn’t matter what they were “meant” to be, but what they actually show! It is one thing for a liberal commentator, however wrong, to indulge in hate speech, and it is a much different thing to be showing twenty representatives on a map with gun crosshairs pointed at them and a message that they “need to go.”

When the violent rhetoric disappears and is replaced with a civil discussion about real problems, only then will the U.S. move toward a more sane society where individuals won’t use guns to kill innocent people. For this, two things need to happen: first, the media needs to start defending rationality and expose people who say hurtful things, whether they are liberals or conservatives. Second, there need to be stricter gun controls. Whatever the argument for “sticking to your gun” – for protection, natural right, et cetera – the fact remains if this person didn’t have easy access to a gun this tragedy wouldn’t have happened!

Alexander Kunev, U3 Mechanical Engineering, can be reached at alexander.kunev@mail.mcgill.ca.

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Making a GMO is as simple as taking one gene from a plant or an animal and inserting it into the genome of another organism. But their potential is significant. Genetically modified (GM) plants are currently used in 25 countries, 15 of which have cultivation areas bigger than 50,000 hectares. Widely viewed as the future of food production, they could be incorporated into highly sustainable practices.

An article by Peggy G. Lemaux in the 2009 Annual Review of Plant Biology explains, “Plants can be created that increase water use and fertilizer efficiencies, that remediate soil contaminants, increase no-till or low-till practices to help reduce greenhouse gases, and produce higher yields without increasing land usage, particularly in developing countries.” Hopes for genetically modified foods include being capable of alleviating world hunger and sustaining population increase. One of their biggest potential benefits is resistance to cold temperatures and droughts, making them perfect for regions where growth of traditional crops is difficult and subject to climate obstacles. In terms of the environment, GMOs could potentially help produce more food from less land, reduce the environmental impact of food production by eliminating the need for chemicals, and rehabilitate damaged or less fertile land. Another application is the production of fruits and vegetables with longer shelf lives, which could reduce waste incurred in transport and supply.

DNA recombination, the process of GMO creation, consists of transferring the desired gene into the target plant or animal, essentially by invading the target cell and depositing the desired gene. In order to successfully invade the target cell, a transfer vector is used, most commonly a bacteria or a virus, with the DNA of the vector recombining with the cut-off DNA sequence of the desired gene. Because of the higher success rates of bacterial transformation, this is the most widely used method today, and a source of the primary concerns with GMOs.

The potential negative effects of GMOs are hard to overlook, and scientists still cannot agree on the consequences of releasing GM material into the environment. Nature is used as a laboratory. There is concern about the dangers that the uncontrolled spread of GMO cultivations can impose on the world’s biodiversity. The current genetic diversity of life on earth has evolved, and thrived, for millions of years. We have successfully domesticated numerous species of plants and animals through breeding. Now, through genetic engineering we are introducing genes into crops that will compete with the existing code of the crop; the seeds developed through conventional breeding, which are already starting to disappear, could be lost forever. GMO crops will be grown in the same regions as non-GMO crops of the same species, which leads to another major problem: interbreeding. The gene transfer to non-target species can happen between crops planted next to each other via pollen dispersal, and there are already several cases where farmers have been accused of cultivating GM patented crops on their farms from pollination without paying for them. Such transfer of GMOs in the environment can create possible problems for their traceability, and widespread use of herbicide-resistance genes, for example, could lead to the development of resistance in insect populations exposed to the genetically modified crops.

The effects on human health are also problematic: most notably, the introduction of new allergies from traces of bacteria and viruses used during the transfer of the DNA sequence, mixing of GM products in the food chain, and making plants antibiotic-resistant through accidental crossbreeding. The 1989 outbreak of L-tryptophan in the United States was triggered by toxic impurities from traces of GM material, and caused the deaths of 37 people, leaving 1,500 with permanent disabilities.

The methods that are currently used to test the potential health risks with GMOs are ineffective because they are based on the concept of substantial equivalence, which maintains that a novel food should be considered just as safe as a conventional food if it demonstrates the same characteristics and composition as the conventional food. Most of the time, however, the product is tested with regard to general composition of the plant, with no special tests for human and animal safety, as with the case of L-tryptophan.

The effect of GMOs on small farmers in developing countries should also be considered. Small farmers could lose their competitiveness in the market due to the patents of the big multinationals, and traditional practices in agriculture might be driven out because of their inability to cope with the GM plants’ higher yield. Since GM seeds are composed of intellectual property, access for public research may be restrained and patent laws could be enacted to act nationally, thus leaving whole countries at the mercy of biotechnology companies.

That’s what happened in the United States when GMOs were officially patented in the ’80s with regulations stating that the provisions created by the three state agencies – USDA, FDA and EPA – are enough, and no potential health or environmental effects need to be taken into consideration.

The situation in Europe has been different from that in the U.S. for two reasons: the increased presence of ecological parties in the European parliament since the end of the ’80s, and a major outbreak of mad cow disease in Great Britain. The demand for GM food products has been significantly lowered because the European public has general mistrust and caution with regard to such products. So that’s why when the freshly appointed European commissioner on health, John Dalli, announced earlier this year that a new GM potato as well as three sorts of GM maize were approved, the public cried foul, citing research showing that releasing these GMOs into the environment could raise bacterial resistance to life-saving medicines.

Nobody knows what the future offers for GMOs, but the prospects are far too great to be neglected. We need more than ever to ensure the safety of GM products through unbiased, multinational testing. But before all that, we should examine the consequences of biotechnology companies having patents on the code for life so that they do not stiff public research. If there is anything that’s our common heritage, it’s the genetic diversity of nature.

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Whatever the consensus after the show, one thing is almost certain: people will be surprised, shocked, and even angered by the results. I must admit: I have myself at certain times felt that a movie out there just didn’t deserve to win the most prestigious award in the business. But over the years, I’ve learned my lesson and finally grasped the Oscars’ real purpose, and I’m ready to share it with you. The simple idea here is that Hollywood movies have been, and will always be, intended as a pure cinematic entertainment (with popcorn) for the general public. So the more people have seen one movie, the better chance it has to triumph at the Oscars. And this couldn’t have been any truer this year with Avatar surpassing $2 billion in gross revenue around the globe and picking up a handful of Oscar nominations. The movie was the expected win for best picture. Still, it didn’t win, perhaps prompting some to turn their backs on the ceremony, saying they would probably not watch it again. A movie everyone’s seen, they think, should win.

But what had made Avatar such a record breaker and the highest grossing movie in the history of cinema was actually a very skillfully orchestrated promotional campaign. Oscar season, as they call it, basically consists of studios endorsing the films that they think would have the biggest impact at the Academy Awards and openly campaigning for them by distributing “for your consideration” copies and organizing screenings all over the country. It’s a basic marketing campaign, with every little detail skillfully selected, as for example the increased visibility of the nominated actors and actresses on talk shows.

After all, it comes down to the absurd unanimity of most film critics that a certain person deserves an Oscar just because they’re “in the lead,” as determined by media coverage. The Oscars become objective, instead of subjective: almost a science, because people base their preferences on previous winners at other awards ceremonies, rather than their own choices. This forgotten subjectivity is the root of the public’s increased discontent with the awards.

Any deviation from this “objective” formula for figuring out who will win makes Oscars viewers cry foul: they claim the awards are given erroneously or that the voters are biased. But we’ve forgotten that the Awards are supposed to be biased – they represent the opinions of a group of people who happen to be working in cinema and know a thing or two about movies.

Statements like Roger Ebert’s – he said that Sandra Bullock would win the award for best actress because “she also collected a lot of year-end awards” – expose the real problem and make us want to bang our head into the wall. The truth is that there are actresses who can make an average movie almost a masterpiece – they outshine the film itself and create an iconic role for which they will always be remembered. Because of this great skill, they are given the Academy Award for Best Actress, like Marion Cotillard for the average film La Vie en rose. Unfortunately for her, Bullock is not one of those actresses – especially not in The Blind Side. But I suppose we shouldn’t get discouraged and too emotional about her nomination; after all, it’s just marketing. She’s performed her publicity campaign without a flaw, and some would say she deserves to win for that alone.

A last reason people turn the Oscars on every year: the desire to analyze every category to see if the “rules” of the Academy prove true once again, or if there are any surprises in store. By rules, I mean the unwritten quasi-laws that Oscar voters follow (e.g. “no young and/or first nominee for best actress can win the award”; “an actor or actress due for an award must win the Oscar, even if their performance in their category was not their best”). These rules were proven this weekend when Avatar failed to win because a movie with no nomination for best screenplay never wins the award for best picture – with a few exceptions, the last one being James Cameron’s Titanic.

In the end, all is not lost: quality cinema prevailed. Maybe the Academy feared that if they failed to choose a deserving best picture this year, they wouldn’t be taken seriously anymore.

Alexander Kunev is a U3 Mechanical Engineering student. Tell him how YOU feel about the Oscars: alex087@gmail.com.

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In the end, Richard Elliot’s argument in The Daily article that explains how we should save public funds by treating people on site (while they are overdosing their brains out) really says it all. It’s not that they think this is the best solution, but they just don’t want to spend too much money on those people and that’s the sad truth.

Alexander Kunev
U3 Mechanical Engineering

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Furthermore, she goes on to state that reconstruction plans are less important than Haitians learning to prepare themselves for future disasters, an argument that contradicts itself. If the infrastructure was developed and 300,000 people weren’t living in the slums, there would not have been a need to be on guard for natural disasters. In the long term, investments in infrastructure can raise the GDP and move the economy upward, something that goes to the core of the problem.

After all, Haiti is a tourist destination and it needs some major reconstruction projects; such projects can provide jobs for the thousands of people affected by the disaster and by poverty. Not to mention completely rebuilding the city in the long term, as is currently happening in New Orleans.

And I also want to say that this earthquake is not something that they could have prepared for, so it is completely senseless to think that they could educate themselves about a natural disaster that isn’t even yet predictable. What could be done is to implement earthquake engineering and seismic retrofit in buildings, as is done all over the world.

Alexander Kunev
U3 Mechanical Engineering

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