A New Law on Against Domestic Violence in Pakistan

Adil just posted a terrific blog post on a new law being contemplated by the government of Pakistan to curb violence against women, especially domestic violence. Aggression, violence, and honor killings are all too common in Pakistan. It is unfortunate that despite the fact that the religion Islam provides no shelter for such violent monsters in our midst, they are able to survive and continue on with their aggression. Please read more here.

But this picture that Adil posted in his post is just absolutely disgusting, exposing the filth that sits all the way in to the corridors of power. In this photograph, city Nazim (i.e. mayor equivalent) of Baldia Town in Karachi, Salman Balouch, is beating up a woman from the opposition party with a belt in the middle of a meeting of Karachi’s City Council. What can one hope with people like this running our governments?

Beauty Contest for Camels and Chastity Belts

Why not a beauty contest for gorgeous camels? People in all parts of the world celebrate the animals they come to love and admire in various ways…and the camel has been an integral part of life in the Middle East for centuries. It is to celebrate the animal the nomadic life & culture of tribal Saudi Arabia has so relied upon, that a beauty contest of camels is being held.

Here’s how a report on this event begins…Flirtatious, I tell you:

The legs are long, the eyes are big, the bodies curvaceous. Contestants in this Saudi-style beauty pageant have all the features you might expect anywhere else in the world, but with one crucial difference — the competitors are camels.

What I find interesting in the next sentence is the reference to Miss Lebanon contests. Now, I am no insider to the Middle East, but I have learned over time that the Lebanese are somehow considered to be quite beautiful among all Arabs, esp their women.

This week, the Qahtani tribe of western Saudi Arabia has been welcoming entrants to its Mazayen al-Ibl competition, a parade of the ‘most beautiful camels’ in the desolate desert region of Guwei’iyya. “In Lebanon they have Miss Lebanon,” jokes Walid, moderator of the competition’s website. “Here we have Miss Camel.”

While tremendous oil wealth has brought rapid modernisation to the desert state of Saudi Arabia, the camel remains celebrated as a symbol of the traditional nomadic lifestyle of Bedouin Arabs. Throughout history camels have served multiple purposes as food, friend, transport and war machine. They were key to the Arab conquests of the Middle East and North Africa nearly 1,400 years ago that brought Islam to the world.

And now this is the funniest part of the story. Camels are big business because Islamic laws do not allow women to take part in beauty contests??? Now, again - I have no problems with a beauty contest for camels - we have all kinds of beauty contests for goats, and cows, and yes especially the dancing horses are so amazing to watch - but what’s up with going straight from women to camels? Is that a good substitute? Why not men first?

Anyways…the rest of article is funny and interesting. I hear camel owners are not ordinary bedouin. Some are famous, rich people. And they really do take care of their camels like some race-horse owners do in some parts of the world.

Camels are also big business in a country where strict Islamic laws and tribal customs would make it impossible for women to take part in their own beauty contest. Delicate females or strapping males who attract the right attention during this week’s show could sell for a million or more riyals. Sponsors have provided 1.36 m for the contest, cash that also covers the 72 sports utility vehicles to be will be awarded as prizes. There are more than 250 owners taking part and more than 1,500 camels.

Restless beauty queens: Over at the camel pen, the contestants are getting restless as the desert wind howls and whips up swirls of sand in the hot afternoon sun. Amid a large crowd of Bedouin who have gathered to watch, the head of the judging committee emerges to venture into an enclosure with some two dozen angry braying camels. Camel-drivers sing songs of praise to their prized possessions as they try to calm the animals down.

And then ofcourse the universal problem for women everywhere pops here as well. The damn males just can’t keep their hands off, esp off the beautiful ones. Even the camels had to wear chastity belts!

The camels are divided into four categories according to breed — the black majaheem, white maghateer, dark brown shi’l and the sufur, which are beige with black shoulders. Arabic famously has over 40 terms for different types of camel. Some females have harnesses strapped around their genitalia to thwart any efforts by the males to mount them. One repeat offender called Marjaa has been moved away.

Diesel Honda Car that Gets 62.8 mpg?

This must rank among the most exciting weeks as far as energy-related news worthy items are concerned in the popular and academic press. I just got done writing about the potential health concerns with widespread use of ethanol E-85, when I read this news report on a Honda diesel car that could be introduced in the US by 2010. This car can get an unbelievable 62.8 miles per gallon on US highways. That is certifieably better than most hybrids, even a Prius. This is fascinating and only proves what I have been saying for a while. Diesel has tremendous potential, especially now that technologies for making diesel as clean as, or cleaner than, gasoline cars are becoming real and commercially viable.

According to the article in CNet news:

 

Honda expects to bring the clean-diesel car to the U.S. by 2010. It gets 62.8 miles a gallon on the highway, but otherwise looks and feels like a regular Accord. At that mileage level, the car is about as “clean” as a new Toyota Prius. But if you run it on biodiesel, a form of diesel made from vegetable oil or animal fat, it would be even cleaner than a Prius (Priuses get 60 in the city).

The advantage of diesel cars, however, is that they pack a lot of power.

The car was shown off with a number of other cars in Sacramento, Calif., earlier this month as a way to promote clean diesel cars and technology. In the ’90s, California passed strict emission controls that restricted the amount of sulfur a car could emit. As a result, diesel manufacturers curbed sales to California and the U.S. in general.

Since then, petroleum manufacturers have devised cleaner diesels that only emit about 15 parts per million of diesel, down from hundreds of parts per million. That satisfies the California law. Manufacturers, meanwhile, have come out with more efficient and powerful diesel engines that get 20 to 40 percent better mileage than their older cars.

“A lot of changes have taken place in the engine, all thanks to electronics,” said Allen Schaeffer, executive director of the Diesel Technology Forum, which helped organize the Clean Diesel Technology Tour. (Cars from Audi and a tractor trailer rig from Caterpillar were also shown). “Half the cars in Europe are diesel.”

Thus, diesels, usually thought of as smelly, are now environmentally somewhat sound.

Quite interesting to note that the author calls them only “somewhat” sound. What does that mean? A rather sloppy job writing it up…

Effects of Ethanol (E85) versus Gasoline Vehicles on Cancer and Mortality in the United States

Some readers here may start thinking that I have something against ethanol (for my other posts, see: here, here, here, here, and here). That is not true. While I do have questions on the net energy balance on the production and shipment of ethanol, the potential with technologies such as cellulosic ethanol can be huge. Additionally, I am becoming more and more convinced that more interesting and useful than ethanol would be butanol. It does not mix readily with water, can be transported in regular pipelines, and has higher energy density than ethanol. Dupont and BP are working on a biofuels alliance that is looking at bio- butanol. There are some very interesting studies that have also emerged recently around the conversion of synthesis gas (syn-gas, i.e. a mixture of CO, CO2 and H2) to biofuels, including biobutanol, via the use of certain enzymatic species in a fermentation reactor. I will write on that topic as soon as I have read a bit more on it.

But here’s a recent paper from the journal Environmental Science & Technology which caught my attention. Thank you to K- for sending it to me. Reader’s beware that its a modeling study, and much like all modeling studies, there are tons of assumptions built into it, but at least I was not expecting this kind of an impact from the use of E-85 ethanol. Here’s an interesting question for scientists working in this field: Are there any public health/epidemeological studies available from Brazil where ethanol is much more widely in use and has been for some time now?

Environ. Sci. Technol., ASAP Article 10.1021/es062085v
S0013-936X(06)02085-2
Web Release Date: April 18,
2007

Copyright © 2007 American Chemical Society

Effects of Ethanol (E85) versus Gasoline Vehicles on Cancer and Mortality in the United States

Mark Z. Jacobson*

Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Stanford University, Stanford, California 94305-4020

Received for review August 31, 2006

Revised manuscript received February 19, 2007

Accepted March 14, 2007

Abstract:

Ethanol use in vehicle fuel is increasing worldwide, but the potential cancer risk and ozone-related health consequences of a large-scale conversion from gasoline to ethanol have not been examined. Here, a nested global-through-urban air pollution/weather forecast model is combined with high-resolution future emission inventories, population data, and health effects data to examine the effect of converting from gasoline to E85 on cancer, mortality, and hospitalization in the United States as a whole and Los Angeles in particular. Under the base-case emission scenario derived, which accounted for projected improvements in gasoline and E85 vehicle emission controls, it was found that E85 (85% ethanol fuel, 15% gasoline) may increase ozone-related mortality, hospitalization, and asthma by about 9% in Los Angeles and 4% in the United States as a whole relative to 100% gasoline. Ozone increases in Los Angeles and the northeast were partially offset by decreases in the southeast. E85 also increased peroxyacetyl nitrate (PAN) in the U.S. but was estimated to cause little change in cancer risk. Due to its ozone effects, future E85 may be a greater overall public health risk than gasoline. However, because of the uncertainty in future emission regulations, it can be concluded with confidence only that E85 is unlikely to improve air quality over future gasoline vehicles. Unburned ethanol emissions from E85 may result in a global-scale source of acetaldehyde larger than that of direct emissions.

Additional resources on butanol:
See links at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Butanol

Chopping Trees on Earth Day?

Earth Day has been celebrated by millions of people around the world each year since 1970. This Sunday, citizens and organizations around the world, including Pakistan, pledged to protect the precious yet fragile environment in which our habitat is placed.

But what did the government do to demonstrate its responsibility towards the environment?

It chopped down dozens of trees along the main highway running through the heart of Karachi. These trees lined the main Sharah-e-Faisal and had been there for decades. The image of the naked chopped down trees is a stark reminder of the gross environmental negligence that has become a part of the norm in our infrastructure development authorities. The image next to it - of the familiar ‘Tree of Life’ is a reminder, that such disrespect for nature is not only environmentally inappropriate, it is also a traversity of our heritage.

Press Clipping(s): We were all dark skinned once?

Here’s a report from Science that should be ” in the face” of white extremists….

Physical anthropologists now believe that European skin only lightened up 6,000 to 12,000 years ago, suggesting that “our European ancestors were brown-skinned for tens of thousands of years” prior to that. The link is subscription-only, so here’s a brief snippet of the Science news article:

Researchers have disagreed for decades about an issue that is only skin-deep: How quickly did the first modern humans who swept into Europe acquire pale skin? Now a new report on the evolution of a gene for skin color suggests that Europeans lightened up quite recently, perhaps only 6000 to 12,000 years ago. This contradicts a long-standing hypothesis that modern humans in Europe grew paler about 40,000 years ago, as soon as they migrated into northern latitudes. Under darker skies, pale skin absorbs more sunlight than dark skin, allowing ultraviolet rays to produce more vitamin D for bone growth and calcium absorption. “The [evolution of] light skin occurred long after the arrival of modern humans in Europe,” molecular anthropologist Heather Norton of the University of Arizona, Tucson, said in her talk.

Butanol Is Better than Ethanol as a Biofuel?

Here is some exciting information I gleaned from a posting in Green Car Congress. Check it out:

Test Results Show Biobutanol Performs Similarly to Unleaded Gasoline

New fuel testing results on bio-derived 1-butanol presented by DuPont and BP at the SAE World Congress indicate that biobutanol has proven to perform similarly to unleaded gasoline on key parameters, based on ongoing laboratory-based engine testing and limited fleet testing.

According to BP Biofuels program manager Frank Gerry, biobutanol formulations meet key characteristics of a “good” fuel, including high energy density, controlled volatility, sufficient octane and low levels of impurities.

He described early testing data that indicate that biobutanol fuel blends at a nominal 10 vol% level perform very similarly to unleaded gasoline fuel. Additionally, the energy density of biobutanol is closer to unleaded gasoline.

[Inset: 1-butanol is less volatile than ethanol, and butanol-gasoline blends are less volatile than ethanol blends. Adding a fraction of butanol to an ethanol blend brings down the volatility. Source: BP]

Butanol does not phase-separate in the presence of water, unlike ethanol. With a lower oxygen content than ethanol, higher volumetric concentrations of butanol could be blended into gasoline while still adhering to oxygen limits. Fuel testing also has proven that biobutanol does not phase separate in the presence of water, and has no negative impact on elastomer swelling.

Combined with ethanol in gasoline blends, butanol can bring down the vapor pressure of the fuel.

Picture(s) of the day: Traffic Safety in Pakistan?

This picture speaks volumes for the careless attitude that much of Pakistani society has adopted towards road and traffic safety (related posts: here and here). Vehicles are often oprated under dangerous conditions, public transport buses with people hanging outside the doors and crowded on the roofs, trucks overloaded with carriage, and rickshaws and motorcycles zigzaging between the traffic to save a few minutes in their commute. All this has resulted in numerous traffic accidents. Truth be told, one can hardly find cars in Pakistan now without at leastsome external damage to them from accidents.

But in the case of this particular picture, I also question the sensibility of the parents who would allow their children to travel like this? Do they not realize how dangerous it is?

Diesel Goes Hybrid?

I have written before how diesel vehicles are just simply awesome (here, here, and here)! They provide high torque at low rpms, and the fuel effiiciency is as good as, if not better than, gasoline hybrids. Not only that, for heavy vehicles, such as high end cars, SUVs, and pickups, diesel hybrids show much greater potential to increse fuel efficiency and redeuce CO2 emissions than their gasoline hybrids counterparts. Now the Automotive Engineering magazine of SAE predicts that emissions of NOx may also be decreased with the advances in the technology. The biggest question has always been cost of such vehucles, given the high cost of both hybrid and diesel powertrains. But now atleast that IAV Automotive Engineering Group’s studies are showing that significant cost reductions are possible in the near future.

For now I am excited to see initial data on the CO2 emissions reduction potential of diesel-hybrids - something I have been waiting for a while on. Diesel-hybrid could make a wonderful combination powertrain for city and highway driving. The electric motor would help reduce the turbo lag, as well as greatly increase city fuel economy, while the diesel powertrain would improve on highway fuel economy, acceleration, torque, and CO2 emissions.

Below is a chart showing a comparison of CO2 emissions (y-axis) as a function of Vehicle weight (x-axis) from gasoline (small green dots), diesel (yellow dots) and gasoline hybrid (large green dots) engines. The dotted yellow line indicates the expected CO2 emissions from diesel-hybrid vehicles.

Dow Chemical: A Private Equity Deal and Another Xenophobic Episode in the Making?

Rumors floated on the PE news circuit this past week that a consortium of Middle Easter investors and KKR are putting together a deal to buy out Dow Chemical Co for US $50 billion. This would be a huge PE deal, but not a terrible surprise given that pretty much any company with a market valuation below $100 billion is in the view of private equity buyers. This has been, in many ways, the private equity deal year with the dollar figures becoming larger every passing month.

But I do not concern myself with that - partly because I do not understand it as well. What I do understand though is that any time Middle East is mentioned in the United States, a red flag goes up in the eyes of some people, and like it or not, the hidden xenophobia towards Arabs reveals itself. This deal will probably not be very different. “Middle East investors” is not a term American politicians (some) will like very much, especially when it relates to the buy out of a firm that has some thing to do with markets that can fall within a broadly described category of “sensitive to national security”. Chemicals probably easily fall in that category, especially if the description of that term is stretched to the degree that I believe certain political forces will try to in the weeks and months to come.

This may be yet another Dubai Ports saga in the making! When that debacle occured I wrote:

What craziness from the so-called representatives of the American people! Shameful and quite unpatriotic. If their opposition to this deal is indeed due to the overwhelming number of calls from their constituents (which I highly doubt), then this should be a shameful realization of the protectionist racism that has infiltrated this society in the post 9-11 era. The rejection of this deal was not about security, it is just a blatant display of racism against Arabs (and probably Muslims in a wider context)

A trusted journalistic source, Daniel Primack of PEWire writes the following in his daily blog:

*** Dow Chemical Co. is downplaying buyout rumors, after a UK tabloid reported that KKR and several Middle Eastern investors are prepping a $50 billion bid. A company spokesman says that Dow has “no interest” in a leveraged buyout, because it believes it can provide the most shareholder value by remaining a public entity.

Now there are plenty of reasons to dismiss the story –for example,the same tabloid published a very similar reporttwo months ago – but “shareholder value” isn’t one of them. After all, this supposed bid would be at between $52 and $58 per share, whereas Dow hasn’t traded above $50 in years…

But my main interest this morning is in positing a political query – rather than a financial one. Let’s assume, for the sake of argument, that such an offer is indeed in the offing, and that the Dow board of directors accepts. The next issue to arise is not so much whether or not shareholders would accept (they would, after holding out for a few more bucks), but whether the United States would accept. You know, the special committee made up of talk radio and cable news denizens.

This is where I see the real problem. Not only would an American icon be taken over by Middle Eastern sheiks, but Dow does have some national security-related responsibilities (particularly in the broad, dependency sense). Plus, who knows when we’ll want to use napalm again…

For the record, I find such concerns to be ignorant at best, and xenophobic at worst. Ditto for the manufactured Dubai Ports World controversy last year. But I’m already seeing it expressed in various political blog posts… Certainly worth keeping an eye on. Discuss amongst yourselves…