Climate change has impacts on forests, fields, rivers – and thereby on humans that breathe, eat and drink. To assess these impacts more accurately, a comprehensive comparison of computer-based simulations from all over the world will start this week. For the first time, sectors ranging from ecosystems to agriculture to water supplies and health will be scrutinized in a common framework. The models will be provided by more than two dozen research groups from the United States, China, Germany, Austria, Kenya, and the Netherlands, among others.

Researchers at the Fraunhofer Heinrich Hertz Institute have succeeded in using their femtosecond laser pulse technology to double the efficiency of black silicon solar cells. Black silicon solar cells make it possible to harness the infrared spectrum in sunlight for power generation. The infrared part makes up around one third of the spectrum and cannot be harnessed by conventional types of solar cell.

As Chinese everywhere were celebrating the first couple of days of the Year of Dragon on January 23rd and 24th, 2012. Chinese police fired indiscriminately on hundreds of Tibetans who had gathered peacefully to claim their basic rights in Drakgo, Serthar, Ngaba, Gyarong, and other neighboring Tibetan areas. Six Tibetans were reportedly killed and around sixty injured, some critically.

His personal turning point was the accident with the reactor in Chernobyl. Since then journalist and author Franz Alt has tirelessly campaigned for a radical rethink of our energy industry compassing the two big environmental issues: EnergyEfficiency and renewable energies. Franz Alt is a fervent advocate of a new ethical approach. A discussion.

The winner of the Nobel Peace Prize talking with Franz Alt. In the future, the Dalai Lama would love to “live as a simple monk in a monastery”. But the expectations and projections of millions of people in the whole world pinned on “His Holiness” are too high. Many regard him as a redeemer. This saddens him. A god cannot simply suspend himself. Even on this topic, which is a really serious one for Buddhists, he does what he loves most: laugh. Apparently, a divine virtue.

“Bread and Freedom” said the insurgents’ many posters in Cairo and Tunis. The hunger of millions of people and rising food prices were undoubtedly among the triggers of both revolutions. One of the main causes of hunger is climate change and the weather extremes that precede it, a fact which climatologists have been predicting for years.