December 2011 Edition
FISH
Consumer Reports has revealed a scam that leaves millions of U.S. consumers clueless whether the fish they think they are buying is the fish they are actually getting. The world's largest independent product testing organization has revealed that 22 per cent of seafood it tested at supermarkets, restaurants, fish markets, gourmet stores and big box stores in three states was either mislabelled, incompletely labelled or misidentified by employees. Americans spent US$80.2-billion on seafood last year, up $5-billion from 2009. The investigation took place in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut where samples were DNA tested by two outside laboratories.
DEBRIS
A wave of debris from Japan's March tsunami will hit Hawaiian shores by 2013. More accurate forecasts are now being prepared after a Russian ship found tsunami debris including a refrigerator, a TV and a damaged 20-foot fishing vessel in the Pacific Ocean between Japan and the Midway Atoll. It is likely that debris will now hit the western U.S. and Canadian coasts by 2014 before bouncing back towards Hawaii for a second impact. It is estimated by the Japanese government that between 10- and 25-million tons of debris, including houses, tires, trees and appliances were washed out to sea.
LAND
Since 1700, the amount of cultivated land on the planet has increased from 7 to 40 per cent. When you look at a globe, more than a third of what you see that is not water or ice, has gone from neighbourhoods for wildlife to croplands for humans or grazing lands for our livestock.
POLYMER
The look and feel of Canadian money has changed. Starting in November, the Bank of Canada introduced polymer-based bank notes beginning with the C$100 bill. The new $50 will be introduced in March 2012 and the remaining notes by the end of 2013. Polymer notes are printed on a smooth, durable film. Currently there are over 30 countries that print some or all of their denominations on polymer, including Australia, Mexico and Romania. The leading edge security features of the notes are easy to verify and the notes are expected to last 2.5 times longer.
CARS
Typical family cars have become more than a foot wider and almost double the weight over the past 50 years as manufacturers struggle with the world's obesity crisis. BMW has recruited 800 volunteers, ranging from slim to obese, for a study to gauge how obesity affects mobility while driving. Mercedes has unveiled plans to strengthen grab handles above its doors, in part to help heavier passengers support themselves. Porche meanwhile is installing powered steering columns which will rise when the engine is switched off. Honda has widened its seats by up to 2-inches over the past decade.
STEALING
Move over Kobe beef and aged whisky, it now turns out that cheese is the most stolen food in the world. A UK retail research group surveyed 1,187 retailers representing more than 250,000 retail outlets across 43 countries which showed that four per cent of cheese went missing from store shelves. Much of the theft is for resale and a lot of this cheese will be resold into other markets or to restaurants.
MEAT
Canada's meat industry says it stands to lose hundreds of millions of dollars a year unless Ottawa moves more quickly to sign a free-trade agreement with South Korea. Recently, the U.S. signed such a trade deal which will mean its beef and pork producers will face much lower tariffs than their Canadian counterparts. South Korea is one of Canada's largest pork markets and was once Canada's fourth largest beef market.
NEWSPAPERS
Worldwide daily newspaper circulation declined by 1.7 per cent in 2010 to 519 million. In the past five years the industry has suffered from global economic turmoil and the migration of readers online. Newspaper advertising revenue fell by 23 per cent between 2006 and 2010. Publishers in mature markets have cut jobs and costs and raised cover prices to stay in print. Newspapers reach 2.3-billion people every day, 20 per cent more readers than the internet. However, globally, the number of daily newspaper titles increased by 200 last year to 14,853.
MANUFACTURING
In 2010, manufacturing productivity increased in all 19 countries surveyed by America's Bureau of Labour Statistics. The previous year, 12 of the countries experienced falls. Taiwan achieved an impressive increase of 15 per cent and was one of the six countries with gains above 10 per cent. In 2008-09, productivity in Japan, Italy and Britain fell by more than 3 per cent but have since recovered lost ground.
FIRES
A series of tens of millions of fires detected worldwide from space since 2002 show how fire affects our environment according to NASA. Data shows that Africa has more abundant burning than any other continent with about 70 per cent of the world's fires. Fires are comparatively rare in North America, making up just 2 per cent of the world's burned area each year.
SCOTCH
As Africans grow richer, they drink more Scotch. They bought US$147-million of it in the first six months of this year, an increase of 34 per cent over last year. Sales of Johnnie Walker doubled in east Africa in 2010 to 790,000 litres and is predicted to rise even more this year, not only in east Africa but in west and southern Africa too.
SAMSUNG
This company began as a small noodle maker in 1938. Since then it has swelled into a network of 83 companies that account for a staggering 13 per cent of South Korea's exports. The biggest company is Samsung Electronics which started out making transistor radios but is now the world's biggest technology firm, measured by sales. It makes more televisions than any other company and may soon displace Nokia as the biggest maker of mobile-telephone handsets. In the next decade Samsung will invest US$20-billion in the fields of solar panels, energy saving LED lights, medical devices, biotech drugs and batteries for electric cars.
TOURISM
Dubai is significantly expanding its cruise ship port in an effort to attract more seafaring tourists to the city's Persian Gulf shores. A second cruise ship terminal at the downtown Port Rashid will be opened by the end of 2012. Up to five cruise liners will be able to dock at a time, compared with two now. Plans call for seven in the future. 120 cruise ships docked at Dubai in 2010 carrying 390,000 passengers. 625,000 passengers are expected by 2015. In 2010, 3.3-million cruise passengers past through Port Everglades, Fla.
COOLING
Facebook Inc. plans to build a server farm in the Swedish town of Lulea, 100 kilometres south of the Arctic Circle, using the northern air to cool its equipment. It will be the first server farm built outside the U.S. by the social networking giant. The average temperature in Lulea is 2 degrees centigrade. As cloud computing becomes the norm, more and more companies, including Google and Apple, are expanding their server farm facilities, many of which are the size of several soccer stadiums and contain thousands of servers. Cooling the servers is a significant cost of operations.
FUEL
The Spanish airline Iberia Lineas has flown the country's first commercial flight using a blend of fuel made from the inedible camelina plant. Last July, airlines won approval from ASTM International, the U.S. technical standards body, to fly planes using fuel made from inedible plants and organic waste mixed with petroleum-derived fuel. Approval allows for blends of up to 50 per cent biofuel. Since July, airlines including Air France-KLM Group and Finnair have flown using such blends.
LIGHT
A new type of "smart" window that switches from summer to winter mode has been made by South Korean scientists. The window darkens when the outside temperature soars, and becomes transparent when it gets cold in order to capture free heat from the sun. This type of light control system may provide a new option for saving on heating, cooling and lighting costs through managing the light transmitted into the interior of a house.
CORK
After a decade of soaring growth for screw caps, bark has begun to beat back the assault. Now, the use of bark is up again as plastic stoppers are disparaged for letting too much air into wine bottles. Over the past 16 months, shipments in cork wine stoppers from Portugal, which supplies the majority of the material to the industry, grew by 19.4 per cent, mainly reclaiming market share from plastic "corks," and also gaining on screw tops.
ARCTIC
Russia has predicted that Arctic shipping routes along Russia's northern coast will soon rival the Suez canal as a quicker trade link from Europe to Asia. Russia plans to revive the Soviet-era shipping lane as polar ice cover recedes to near record levels. This could speed energy deliveries to China and boost business for cargo suppliers. This route is almost a third shorter than the traditional southern one.
RUBIES
While the price of gold continues to climb, growing numbers of investors are also venturing farther afield into gemstones such as rubies, sapphires and emeralds. Dealers say that prices for high-quality rubies are up by 50 per cent this year and the same applies to sapphires. In a recent auction to wholesalers, African emeralds sold for more than 63 per cent per carat than higher-quality stones fetched last December.
TESTING
A technology company is building a US$200-million desert ghost town 20 miles square for testing smart city technologies, such as traffic control, smart power grids, cyber security and self-driving vehicles.
VOLUNTEERING
Having volunteer work in your resume has the potential to make you more attractive to employers, a new survey suggests. The survey of 1,200 professionals in Canada found that 84 per cent have had personal experience doing volunteer work, such as fundraising and organizing charity events. 46 per cent of hiring managers said they consider such volunteer work equally as valuable as paid work experience when evaluating candidates.
WOUNDS
A would dressing that glows to indicate an infection has been developed. Scientists at Sheffield University have produced a gel containing molecules that bind to bacteria and activate a fluorescent dye. The dressing emits a pinkish glow under ultraviolet light when harmful levels of bacteria are present.
GASOLINE
A British insurance firm has compiled a list of gasoline prices around the world. These are the five countries where gas is least expensive. Bahrain, 21 cents a litre; Turkmenistan, 19 cents; Libya, 14 cents; Saudi Arabia, 13 cents and Venezuela, 4.7 cents.
RESTAURANTS
A restaurant owner in Saudi Arabia is cracking down on food wastage by fining diners who don't eat everything they order. The owner says customers often order large quantities of food as a status symbol at his establishment in order to impress the people around them and to boost their social prestige. The owner calculates the fines based on the amount of food left over and says that he has received support from other Saudis for his idea.
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